they are. To the study of these two households I gave
nearly every hour of daylight, in all weathers, for a month, and of the
life that went on in and around them I can speak from personal
knowledge; beyond that, and at other times in his life, I do not profess
to know the mocking-bird.

The bird whose nest-making I witnessed was the one whose performance I
chose to consider a welcome, and his home was in the pine grove, a group
of about twenty trees, left from the original forest possibly, at any
rate nearly a hundred feet high, with all branches near the top, as
though they had grown in close woods. They were quite scattering now,
and lower trees and shrubs flourished in their shade, making a charming
spot, and a home worthy even of this superb songster. The bird himself
was remarkably friendly. Seeming to appreciate my attitude of admiring
listener, he often perched on the peak of a low roof (separated only by
a carriage drive from the upper "gallery" where I sat), and sang for
hours at a time, with occasional lunches; or, as Lanier, his most ardent
lover, has it,--

"Then down he shot, bounced airily along
The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made song
Midflight, perched, prinked, and to his art again."

Whatever he did, his eyes were upon me; he came to the corner nearest me
to sing, and was so intelligent in look and bearing that I believe he
liked a quiet listener.

His wooing, however, the bird did not intend me to see, though two or
three times I surprised him at it. The first part that I chanced upon
was curious and amusing. A female, probably the "beloved object," stood
demurely on one of the dead top branches of a large tree down in the
garden, while her admirer performed fantastic evolutions in the air
about her. No flycatcher ever made half the eccentric movements this
aerial acrobat indulged in. He flew straight up very high, executing
various extraordinary turns and gyrations, so rapidly they could not be
followed and described, and came back singing; in a moment he departed
in another direction, and repeated the grotesque performance. He was
plainly exerting himself to be agreeable and entertaining, in
mocking-bird style, and I noticed that every time he returned from an
excursion he perched a little nearer his audience of one, until, after
some time, he stood upon the same twig, a few inches from her. They were
facing and apparently trying to stare each other out of countenance; and