. Our birds in their haunts [microform] : a popular treatise on the birds of eastern North America. Birds; Oiseaux. THE CATBIRD, 225 various ferns. Thus the nest is grayish outside and silken- white, or delicate reddish, inside. The walls are thick and firni, and the lining is as soft and delicate a couch as any birdling ever pillowed its head upon. The eggs, some four in number, about .87 , are generally grayish or greenish- white, pretty heavily spotted, sometimes blotch/sd with brown and lilac, and are very variable. Though the nest is generally built by the last of May, there is but on
. Our birds in their haunts [microform] : a popular treatise on the birds of eastern North America. Birds; Oiseaux. THE CATBIRD, 225 various ferns. Thus the nest is grayish outside and silken- white, or delicate reddish, inside. The walls are thick and firni, and the lining is as soft and delicate a couch as any birdling ever pillowed its head upon. The eggs, some four in number, about .87 , are generally grayish or greenish- white, pretty heavily spotted, sometimes blotch/sd with brown and lilac, and are very variable. Though the nest is generally built by the last of May, there is but one brood raiiied in this locality, and the birds leave us for the south in September. As an exception to the whole genus, D. astiva has no white markings in the tail, except that the quills of the outer tail- feathers are white. The young being for some time with- out the red markings beneath, Audubon at first made them a separate species, which he called "the Children's ; This bird shows special ingenuity in building out the Cow-bird's egg, sometimes making even a three-story nest for that purpose; although it is not, as was supposed by the earlier ornithologists, the only bird resorting to this expe- dient, the Redstart, Pho?be, etc., discovering the same contrivance. Covering all North America to the arctics, and even reaching South America ;n winter, his abundant species is especially characteristic of ou: *-nt. THE CATBIRD. On the last day of April, as I paddle my canoe along the still waters of Tonawanda, I spy a Catbird {Mimus caroli- nensis) in the bushes near the stream. Only 9 inches long^ of a plain dark drab or ash, excepting the black crown and the bright chestnut of the under tail-coverts, and keeping low among the thick shrubbery, this bird is now by no means con- spicuous.* As itapproachesnidification, about the last of May, * I once uw in the possession of Professor W. E. D, Scott, of Princeton, a Catbird which was as white as a white ra
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1884
