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220 great poet, Longfellow, describes the mocking bird's song in Evangeline:

"Then, from a neighboring thicket, the mocking bird, wildest of singers, Shook from his little throat such a flood of delirious music, That the whole air, and the woods, and the waters, seemed silent to listen."

Beside his own song he mocks all the other birds. He warbles and chirps and whistles; he twitters and trills, so you might think all the birds were holding concert when he sings.

The mocker's nearest rival in the garden was a red-brown-backed cousin, with a brown-spotted vest of cream color. Sometimes he is called the brown thrasher, from the way he thrashes his tail about. . And he is called the brown mocker, too. One thing he does is to mock himself. He perches on a lofty branch of a tree to sing. Long black bill open and pointing skyward, he sings a song "like a babble of water in a brook."

When the song is finished he seems to say: "I wonder if I could do that again." And he does it, exactly as he did it before. The English poet Browning has noticed it:

That's the wise thrush, who sings each song twice over,

As if you might think he never could re-capture

The first, wild, careless rapture."

Besides his own song, "twice over," the brown thrush sings choice bits from a dozen other bird songs, one after the other. " Hear me! Hear me!" he trills: "I can sing this, and this and this. Oh, the joy of it,—under the blue—in the sweet wind—swinging. Don't you wish—you could do it? Try, try, try, yes you can, truly, truly!" Such a little cataract of melody, to fall from the high branch of an elm.

The cat bird is a mocker, too. He is a thrush who can sing a pretty song when he wants to. But he is a saucy fellow. He caws like a crow and meows like a cat, to scare his timid neighbors into spasms, and to waken Rob Roy from his nap. Then he laughs at the joke. Do you know Mr. Cat Bird? He is quite a dandy, in a coat of London smoke and a pearl vest. He has a rusty red tail