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Updated: May 8, 2025
He talked freely of his dead wife, he even made ill-placed jests about his widowerhood, and he never failed to kiss a pair of red lips when the chance offered; but, for all that, his gaze often wandered past the huge sycamore to the family graveyard, where rank periwinkle grew and mocking-birds nested.
He is, indeed, more remarkable for his indefatigable propensity than for his powers. Single sounds, from whatever source they may come, from birds, quadrupeds, reptiles, or machines, he gives very accurately; but I have heard numbers of Mocking-Birds in confinement attempt to imitate the Canary, and always without success.
Their open-air vocal performances are quite as remarkable as their latest admirer says. They are the British mocking-birds, able, when and if they choose, to reproduce almost any form of song. They do this partly, no doubt, because their throats are adaptable, but more from temperament and a kind of objective mind not very common in birds.
Then the fact of imprisonment first presented itself, and they vainly endeavored to escape through the interstices of the cage, never once guided by their instinct to return to liberty through the route by which they had entered. Among the different kinds of birds captured in this way, mocking-birds, blue-birds, robins, meadow larks, quail, and plover were the most numerous.
To be of no consequence; not to be in demand; not to be depended upon by a thousand people, and for a thousand things; not to dash somewhere upon important errands; not to feel that a minute was a treasure, and that mine were valued as hid treasures; not to know that my services were superior; to feel the canker of idleness eat upon me like one of the diseases which I had considered impossible to my organization; to observe the hours, which had hitherto been invisible, like rear forces pushing me to the front; to watch the crippled moments, which had always flown past me like mocking-birds; to know to the full the absence of movement in life; to feel deficiency of purpose like paralysis stiffen me; to have no hope of anything better, and not to know what worse might be before me, such had been my first experience of the new life.
Orchard orioles, no unworthy companions of mocking-birds and cardinals, sang here and there from a low treetop, especially in the vicinity of houses. To judge from what I saw, they are among the most characteristic of Tallahassee birds, as numerous as Baltimore orioles are in Massachusetts towns, and frequenting much the same kind of places. In one day's walk I counted twenty-five.
Red-eyed chewinks, still far from their native berry pastures, hopped into a bush to cry, "Who's he?" at the passing of a stranger, in whom, for aught I know, they may have half recognized an old acquaintance. As for the mocking-birds, they were at the front here, as they were everywhere.
As her slumbers grew lighter, dreams of father, mother, and sister passed through various changes; the last of which was that Flora was puzzling the mocking-birds. She waked to the consciousness that some one was whistling in the room. "Who is that!" exclaimed she; and the parrot replied with a tempest of imitations.
The Mexican parrots are the most voluble to be found this side of southern Africa. It seems that there are conventional rules relating to bird-fancying here; the middle and lower classes make pets of the parrot tribe, while the more pretentious people prefer mocking-birds, canaries, and the favorite little clarin.
The sheriff of the county was obdurate, deaf to all intents and purposes. He shook his head glumly when it was suggested that she might remain with the child until his mother should arrive in response to the telegram already sent. "Might poison him Indians are queer cattle! Mocking-birds will do that if the young ones are caged, through the bars, by jing!"
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