The Mockingbird 
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yard provides a very popular restaurant, not 
only for the song birds among the branches, 
but for the scratchers on the ground floor. 
Like the yellow-breasted chat, the catbird 
likes to hide its nest in a tangle of cat brier along 
the roadside undergrowth and in bushy, wood- 
land thickets. Last winter, when that vicious 
vine had lost every leaf, I counted in it eighteen 
catbird nests within a quarter of a mile along 
a country lane. Long before the first snow- 
storm, the inmates of those nests were enjoying 
summer weather again from the Gulf States to 
Panama. If one nest should be disturbed in May 
or June, when the birds are raising their families, 
all the catbird neighbours join in the outcry of 
mews and cat-calls. Should a disaster happen 
to the parents, the orphans will receive food and 
care from some devoted foster-mother until they 
are able to fly. You see catbirds are something 
far better than intelligent, musical dandies. 
THE MOCKINGBIRD 
What child is there who does not know the 
mockingbird, caged or free? In the North you 
very rarely see one now-a-days behind prison 
bars, for, happily, several enlightened states 
have made laws to punish people who keep our 
wild birds in cages or offer them for sale, dead or 
