162 
The Mockingbird 
Hawk is a common resident, many of the Mockers will reproduce its cry 
so perfectly as to deceive the most highly trained ear. Not all Mocking- 
birds have equal power of imitation, for the gift of mocking in different 
individuals seems to vary as much as the range of their natural song. 
An observer in South Carolina speaks of hearing one mimic the notes 
of no fewer than thirty-two birds during an interval of ten minutes. 
The nest of the Mockingbird is variously situated— in small trees, 
brush-heaps, briers, in the corners of rail-fences, in 
Nest the decayed trunks of trees, on stumps, in piles of 
cord-wood, and in vines growing about the doors 
and verandas of village or country houses. Once I found a nest 
between the wall and the stick-and-clay chimney of a ruined cabin. 
Building-materials consist of twigs, dry grasses, pieces of paper, strings, 
strips of bark, feathers, rags, or other suitable articles easily pro- 
cured. The structure is lined with rootlets. The distance at which the 
nest is placed above the ground varies from three to ten feet. Rarely one 
may be seen on the bough of a large tree at an elevation of fifty feet 
above the ground. 
The eggs have a pale, greenish-blue, ground-color, and are rather 
heavily covered with reddish-brown spots. Four is the number usually j 
laid in a nest, sometimes five, and rarely six. The one profession of the 
male in the spring is singing, and so completely does this engross his mind 
that to his mate is left the entire responsibility of constructing their 
habitation and hatching the eggs. May is the prin- 
Eggs cipal month for nesting, although I have seen Mock- 
ingbirds incubating their eggs as far north as Ocracoke 
Inlet, North Carolina, by April io. In the southern part of the bird’s 
range two broods are reared in a season. 
While brooding the eggs, or caring for the young, the nest is guarded 
with the utmost care. The parents will not hesitate to attack any enemy, 
real or imaginary, that may approach their domain, be it crow, or dog, 
or man; if they do not actually assail him they will at least hover near 
and scold soundly, and their cries of alarm at once warn other birds in 
the vicinity of impending danger. If the intruder be a hawk, the cry is 
taken up and passed from garden to garden by these self-appointed 
sentinels, and the evil news of the hawk’s approach is heralded faster 
than the winged desperado can fly. 
If a Mockingbird’s nest be destroyed, within a few days the mother- 
bird will begin building a new one ; if an accident befalls this likewise 
still another will be built. A pair once made their nest among the rails 
of a fence near my home. The owner of the fence soon afterward, while 
Persistent making some repairs, accidentally tore the nest from 
Home-makers lts P os ffion an d the eggs were broken. The birds 
then settled in a small tree near by, but an animal 
in the pasture rubbed the tree down, and again the birds were without 
a home. 
