254 NATURAL HISTORY IN ANECDOTE,

whe The Mocking Bird is a native of America and
Mocking many stories are told of its wonderful powers
Bird. of mimicry. The following description is furnished

by Wilson: “The plumage of the Mocking Bird, though
none of the homeliest, has nothing gaudy or brilliant in it,
and, had he nothing else to recommend him, would scarcely
entitle him to notice; but his figure is well proportioned, and
even handsome. The ease, elegance, and rapidity of his
movements, the animation of his eye, and the intelligence
he displays in listening, and laying up lessons from almost
every species of the feathered creation within his hearing,
are really surprising, and mark the peculiarity of his genius.
In his native groves, mounted upon the top of a tall bush
or half grown tree, in the dawn of a dewy morning, while
the woods are already vocal with a multitude of warblers,
his admirable song rises pre-eminent over every competitor.
The ear can listen to his music alone, to which that of all
the others seems a mere accompaniment. Neither is this
strain altogether imitative. His own native notes, which are
easily distinguishable by such as are acquainted with those
of our various song birds, are bold and full, and varied
seemingly beyond all limits. They consist of short expres-
sions of two, three, or at the most five or six syllables, generally
interspersed with imitations, and all of them uttered with
great emphasis and rapidity, and continued with undiminished
ardour for half an hour, or an hour, ata time. His expanded
wings and tail, glistening with white, and the buoyant gaiety
of his action, arresting the eye, as his song most irresistibly
does the ear, he sweeps round with enthusiastic ecstasy and
mounts and descends as his song swells or dies away. ‘He
bounds aloft with the celerity of an arrow, as if to recover
or recall his very soul, which expired in the last elevated
strain.’ He often deceives the sportsman, and sends him in
search of birds that/are not perhaps within miles of him, but
whose notes he exactly imitates: even birds themselves are