592 
A YEAR WITH THE BIRDS 
Song: A brilliant recitative, varied and inimitable, beginning, “Prut! 
prut ! coquillicot ! really, really, coquillicot ! Hey coquillicot ! Hey ! 
Victory 1” Alarm cry, “Zeay! zeay!” like a metallic mewing. 
Season: Early May to October and November. 
Nest: In bushes, of the type of the nests of the Thrushes, but without 
clay. 
Eggs: 4-6, clear green-blue. 
What should we do without the Catbird, the merry, mis- 
chievous mocker, all dressed in a parson’s suit of dark drab, 
with a solemn black cap on a head that is as full of tricks as 
his throat is of music? 
“Ah,” you say, “ yes, I know that he is a jolly musician, 
but my father says that he bites the best strawberries and 
cherries, and always on the ripest cheek ! ” 
Well, so he does sometimes ; but his ancestors lived on that 
spot where your garden stands before yours did, and you have 
more ways of earning a living than he has. Give him some- 
thing else to eat. 
The remedy is obvious : cultivated fruits can be protected 
by the simple expedient of planting wild species or others 
which are preferred by the birds. Some experiments with 
Catbirds in captivity showed that the Russian mulberry was 
preferred to any cultivated fruit that could be offered. 
The stomachs of 213 Catbirds were examined and found to 
contain 44 per cent, of animal (insect) and 56 per cent, of 
vegetable food. Ants, beetles, caterpillars, and grasshoppers 
constitute three-fourths of the animal food, the remainder 
being made up of bugs, miscellaneous insects, and spiders. 
One-third of the vegetable food consists of cultivated fruits, 
or those which may be cultivated, such as strawberries, raspber- 
ries, and blackberries ; but while we debit the bird with the 
whole of this, it is probable — and in the eastern and well- 
wooded part of the country almost certain — that a large part 
was obtained from wild vines. The rest of the vegetable matter 
is mostly wild fruit, such as cherries, dogwood, sour gum, 
elderberries, greenbrier, spice berries, black alder, sumac, and 
poison ivy. 
Although the Catbird sometimes does considerable harm 
bv destroying small fruit, the bird can not be considered in- 
jurious. On the contrary, in most parts of the country it does 
far more good than harm, and the evil it does can be reduced 
appreciably by the methods already pointed out. 
