MASTERED OVER NIGHT.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXII, Issue XVI, 22 April 1899, Page 545

MASTERED OVER NIGHT.

A good story about a bird, or any other animal, is doubly interesting if the reader ean be sure that it is not only true substantially, but has not been dressed out by the writer’s imagination. Such a story is the following, told by Mr William Brewster, one of the best known of American ornithologists. He was spending some weeks at the little village of St. Mary’s on the coast of Georgia. Mocking-birds were abundant, and being protected by every one, ‘were half domesticated, building their nests in the shrubbery that surrounded the houses, and hopping about, like robins, upon the grass-plots and gravelled walks.’ An orange-tree in front of the window was appropriated by a. particularly fine singer. His repertoire included the notes of nearly all the birds of the surrounding region, besides many of flu- characteristic village sounds, and most of the imitations were simply perfect. Moreover, he was continually adding to his accomplishments. An instance of this occurred one afternoon, when several of us were sitting- on the verandah. A greater yellow-legs (a well-known game bird of the snipe and sandpiper family) passing over the town was attracted by my answering whistle, and circled several times above the house reiterating his mellow call. The mocking-bird up to this time had been singing almost uninterruptedly, but at tlie sound of these strange notes he relapsed into silence and re-

treated into the thickest foliage of his favourite tree. Then we heard him trying them in an undertone. The first note came pretty readily, but the falling inflection of the succeeding three troubled him. Whenever "I ventured to prompt he would listen attentively, and at the next attempt show an evident improvement. Finally he abandoned the task, as we thought, in despair, and at sunset that evening, for the first and only time during my' stay, his voice was missing in the general ehorus. But at daylight the next morning the garden rang with a perfect imitation of the yellowleg’s whistle. He had mastered it during the night, and ever afterward it was his favourite part.

The discomfiture of the rival males in the neighbourhood was as amusing as it was unmistakable. Each in turn tried the new song, but not one succeeded.