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There sounded something familiar to the uninvited guest in the voice which seemed to delay this intention; but the cat-bird, with his unaccommodating mood, broke right in again.
In the old colonial mansion in which he was born, he dwelt in the embowering leafage, amid the quiet of lawns and garden-plots broken by few noises ruder than those from the elms and the syringas where "The oriole clattered and the cat-bird sang."
In the lucent mornings of April you will hear your old friends coming home to you, Phoebe, and Oriole, and Yellow-Throat, and Red-Wing, and Tanager, and Cat-Bird. When they call to you and greet you, you will understand that Nature knows a secret for which man has never found a word the secret that tells itself in song. The third of the forest-vines is Wood-Magic.
He alighted on the top twig, in plain sight, and proceeded to "look me over," a performance which I returned with interest. He was silent only a few seconds, but the sound that came from his beak amazed me; it was a "mew." If the cat-bird cry resembles that of a cat, this was a perfect copy of a kitten's weak wail.
It was succeeded by the sharp tones of a saw-whet and the distinct mew of a cat-bird. A wild pigeon began to coo softly in another direction and was answered by a thrush. The listener vaguely realized that all this unexpected melody came from the Indians, who had by this time surrounded the house and who took this method of communicating with one another.
A cat-bird answered it with a harsh cry; a blue-jay answered him with a still harsher note. But then a brown thrush burst into unaccustomed post-meridian song. Even his throbbing trills and thrilling, liquid quaverings, had not more melody in them, however, than had her ringing laughter. Her laugh, too, roused more than vagrant birds into attention.
These are some of the ends they serve. A Deermouse seeking the safety of a bramble thicket and a warm house, will make his own nest in the forsaken home of a Cat-bird. A Gray Squirrel will roof over the open nest of a Crow or Hawk and so make it a castle in the air for himself.
To his Daughters, then living in London Terrace, New York. Sr. DAVID'S sends a challenge to all the Terrace birds. Show us a bird that sings in the night. We have a nightingale, a bird that has sung, for two evenings past, between ten and twelve, as gayly as the nightingales of Champel. It is the cat-bird, the same that comes flying and pecking at our windows.
Far up the creek, a cat-bird, hidden amongst scented basswood blossoms, was singing a gay medley of purest music. On either side the banks were hidden in a luxury of reeds, water-lily leaves, blue forget-me-nots, and gay bobbing lady's-slippers. And between, the winding stream shone pink and gold in the sunrise. Charles Stuart stood watching his lady as she filled her hands with blossoms.
"You know Ruthie's Popocatepetl, Neale you know you do." "But a thing with feathers, roosting in a tree, must be some kind of a fowl yes?" asked Neale, with gravity. "It's a cat-bird," announced Agnes. The younger girls could not see any fun in the situation.
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