Page:Birdcraft-1897.djvu/127

 Catbird ' ' SONG-BIRDS.

thrilling, wild notes, which are to be much preferred. The pathetic quality of its native night music inspired Walt VVhitmau with the theme of one of his best poems,—that of the Mockingbird searching for his lost mate, singing and calling in his loneliness :—

“But soft! sink low; Soft! let me just murmur, And do you wait a moment, you husky—noiséd sea; For somewhere, I believe, I heard my mate responding to me. So faint—I must be still, be still to listen ; But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to me."

Catbird: Galeoscoptes carolinensis.

PLATE 13.

Length: 8,60—9 inches. ‘ _

Male and Female : Above clear, deep slate. Under parts lighter gray. Crown and tail black. Vent rust-red. Bill and feet black.

Song : A brilliant recitative, varied and inimitable, beginning, “ Pruti Prut! coquillicot! really, really, coquillicotl Hey coquillicotl Hey! Victory!” Alarm cry, “zeay ! zeay i" like a metallic mewing.

Season: Early May to October and November.

Breeds: From Gulf States northward to the Saskatchewan.

Nest : In bushes, of the type of the nests of the Thrushes, but without

clay.

Eggs: 4-6, clear green-blue.

Range: Eastern United States and southern British Provinces, west to, and including, the Rocky Mountains; occasional on the Paciﬁc coast. Winters in the Southern States, Cuba and Middle America to Panama. Accidental in Europe.

Next to the Thrushes, no bird would be so much missed from the garden as the (to my mind misnamed) Catbird. For it is as a garden bird that it is best known here, although Wilson Flagg considers it more frequently a tenant of woods and pastures. I have found it nesting in all sorts of places, from an alder bush, overhanging a lonely brook, to a scrub apple in an open ﬁeld, but never in deep woods, and it is

when in its garden home, and in the hedging bushes of an ad- 78