Identifier: newsfrombirds00key (find matches)
Title: News from the birds
Year: 1898 (1890s)
Authors: Keyser, Leander Sylvester, 1856-
Subjects: Birds
Publisher: New York, D. Appleton and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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ge, an al-most idyllic place for rest and natural historystudy and pastime. In this region the mockingbirds are not abundant, only one pair havingbeen seen, while a third songster was heard ata distance. On the first morning, at the peepof dawn, my half-wakeful slumbers were brokenby the loud mimicry of a mocker, which, withhis mate, annually takes up summer residenceon the hillside below the hotel. A wonderfulminstrel he proved to be, more limber-tonguedand versatile, it seemed to me, than the mock-ers I heard, two years prior, along the Gulfcoast in southern Mississippi. There one mightlisten to eight or ten mockers singing simul-taneously, while here my jolly vocalist had thefield all to himself for exercise in imitativegymnastics. This fact may account for his ap-parent superiority over southern rivals. It ispossible, too, that those birds which are morehardy and therefore more strong throated,migrate farther north with the advent ofspring. Be that as it may, this mocker is worthy
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crt egc3 BIRDS AKD BATTLEFIELDS. 175 of more than a mere casual notice. He wasan aviary in himself. His vocal performancesdeserve analysis, for they were little short ofmarvelous. His throat seemed to be a livingphonograph. Again and again I bent my earon his song, and am disposed to announce thatalmost, perhaps quite, every note he struckwas an imitation of one of his fellow-minstrelsin feathers. None of his music seemed to beoriginal. A wholesale plagiarist he, boldly pro-claiming his theft to all the world. Mockersin cages are apt to imitate various other sounds,such as the tones of a piano, a dinner horn, ora tooting locomotive, and I have been told ofone that would whistle the tune of Home,Sweet Home ; but the minstrel of MissionaryEidge, in the free out of doors, confined hismimicry solely to the songs and calls of otherbirds, disdaining, it would appear, to borrowfrom the human world. As a copyist of his fellow-lyrists he was anadept. His superior I have never heard. Theskill w

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