SPECIES 8. TURDUS LIVIDVS. 
CAT-BIRD. 
[Plate XIV. — Fig. 3.] 
Muscicapa Carolinensis, Linn. Syst. 328 . — Le gobe-moiiche brim 
de Virginie, Briss. ir, 365. — Cat-bird, Catesb. i, 66. — Lath- 
am, II, 353 . — Le moucheroUe de Virginie, Buff, iv, 562. — 
Lucar lividus, apice nigra, the Cat-bird, or Chicken-bird, Bar- 
team, p. 290. — Peale’s Museum, JVo. 6770. ' 
We have here before us a very common and very numerous 
species, in this part of the United States; and one as well known 
to all classes of people, as his favourite briars, or blackberry 
bushes. In spring or summer, on approaching thickets of bram- 
bles, the first salutation you receive is from the Cat-bird; and a 
stranger, unacquainted with its note, would instantly conclude 
that some vagrant orphan kitten had got bewildered among the 
briars, and wanted assistance ; so exactly does the call of the bird 
resemble the voice of that animal. Unsuspicious, and extreme- 
ly familiar, he seems less apprehensive of man than almost any 
other of our summer visitants; for whether in the woods, or in 
the garden, where he frequently builds his nest, he seldom allows 
you to pass without approaching to pay his respects, in his usual 
way. This humble familiarity and deference, from a stranger 
too, who comes to rear his young, and spend the summer with 
us, ought to entitle him to a full share of our hospitality. Sorry 
I am, however, to say, that this, in too many instances, is cruelly 
the reverse. Of this I will speak more particularly in the se- 
quel. 
About the twenty-eighth of February the Cat-bird first arrives 
in the lower parts of Georgia from the south, consequently win- 
ters not far distant, probably in Florida. On the second week 
