per, cotton
wadding, bark, Spanish moss, and feathers, lined with fine root fibre, I
think. The feathers were not inside for lining, but outside on the upper
edge. It was, like the foundation, so frail that, though carefully
managed, it could only be kept in shape by a string around it, even
after the mass of twigs had been removed. I have a last year's nest,
made of exactly the same materials, but in a much more substantial
manner; so perhaps the cedar-tree birds were not so skillful builders as
some of their family.

The mocking-bird's movements, excepting in flight, are the perfection of
grace; not even the cat-bird can rival him in airy lightness, in easy
elegance of motion. In alighting on a fence, he does not merely come
down upon it; his manner is fairly poetical. He flies a little too high,
drops like a feather, touches the perch lightly with his feet, balances
and tosses upward his tail, often quickly running over the tips of half
a dozen pickets before he rests. Passing across the yard, he turns not
to avoid a taller tree or shrub, nor does he go through it; he simply
bounds over, almost touching it, as if for pure sport. In the matter of
bounds the mocker is without a peer. The upward spring while singing is
an ecstatic action that must be seen to be appreciated; he rises into
the air as though too happy to remain on earth, and opening his wings,
floats down, singing all the while. It is indescribable, but enchanting
to see. In courtship, too, as related, he makes effective use of this
exquisite movement. In simple food-hunting on the ground,--a most
prosaic occupation, truly,--on approaching a hummock of grass he bounds
over it instead of going around. In alighting on a tree he does not
pounce upon the twig he has selected, but upon a lower one, and passes
quickly up through the branches, as lithe as a serpent. So fond is he of
this exercise that one which I watched amused himself half an hour at a
time in a pile of brush; starting from the ground, slipping easily
through up to the top, standing there a moment, then flying back and
repeating the performance. Should the goal of his journey be a fence
picket, he alights on the beam which supports it, and hops gracefully to
the top.

Like the robin, the mocking-bird seeks his food from the earth,
sometimes digging it, but oftener picking it up. His manner on the
ground is much like the robin's; he lowers the head, runs a few steps
rapidly, then erects himself