be safe to include it.
Mrs. Osgood Wright states that individuals have often been seen in the
city parks of the east, one having lived in Central Park, New York
city, late into the winter, throughout a cold and extreme season. They
have reared their young as far north as Arlington, near Boston, where
they are noted, however, as rare summer residents. Dr. J. A. Allen,
editor of _The Auk_, notes that they occasionally nest in the
Connecticut Valley.

The Mocking Bird has a habit of singing and fluttering in the middle
of the night, and in different individuals the song varies, as is
noted of many birds, particularly canaries. The song is a natural love
song, a rich dreamy melody. The mocking song is imitative of the notes
of all the birds of field, forest, and garden, broken into fragments.

The Mocker's nest is loosely made of leaves and grass, rags, feathers,
etc., plain and comfortable. It is never far from the ground. The eggs
are four to six, bluish green, spattered with shades of brown.

Wilson's description of the Mocking Bird's song will probably never be
surpassed: "With expanded wings and tail glistening with white, and
the bouyant gayety of his action arresting the eye, as his song does
most irresistably the ear, he sweeps around with enthusiastic ecstasy,
and mounts and descends as his song swells or dies away. And 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."

Very useful is he, eating large spiders and grasshoppers, and the
destructive cottonworm.

THE LOGGERHEAD SHRIKE.

A rambler in the fields and woodlands during early spring or
the latter part of autumn is often surprised at finding insects,
grasshoppers, dragon flies, beetles of all kinds, and even larger
game, mice, and small birds, impaled on twigs and thorns. This is
apparently cruel sport, he observes, if he is unacquainted with the
Butcher Bird and his habits, and he at once attributes it to the
wanton sport of idle children who have not been led to say,

With hearts to love, with eyes to see,
With ears to hear their minstrelsy;
Through us no harm, by deed or word,
Shall ever come to any bird.

If he will look about him, however, the real author of this mischief
will soon be detected as he appears with other unfortunate little
creatures, which he requires to sustain his own life and that of his
nestlings. The offen