There is a legend to fit the case, as usual. This bird was once a great gray cat, and got its living by devouring the young of such birds as nest in low bushes.
CAT BIRD.
All the birds met in convention to pray the gods they might be rid of this particular cat.
As no created thing may be absolutely deprived of life, but only transformed into some other being, this cat was changed into a bird, henceforth doomed to mew and scream like a kitten in trouble.
Its note long since ceased to have much effect upon the birds, who seldom mistake its cry for that of their real enemy in fur and claws.
Not so its human friends, for it takes a fine ear indeed to distinguish the bird from a cat when neither is in sight.
Now this bird, doomed, as the superstition runs, to prowl and lurk about in dark places near the ground, seldom flies high, nor does it often nest in trees. This does not prevent the singer from exercising his musical talents, however, more, than it does the meadow-lark or the song-sparrow.
It is in midsummer that the cat-bird is best known as the bird that "mews." Then both birds, if one approaches the nest, fly at the intruder, wings drooping, tail spread, beak open, whole attitude one of scolding anger.