Going-to-bed-time and getting-up-time are happy hours with the birds. About sundown you will hear them saying, "Just one more twitter," "One more worm, if you please," or, "One more flight to the highest tree." While you are watching them in the soft twilight, there is a sudden hush and not a bird is in sight. If you have not been paying close attention, with your eyes wide open, it will be impossible for you to tell what has become of the birds, they go to bed so quickly and silently. Not a sound will break the stillness, unless a merry mocking-bird wakes you out of your sleep. These mocking-birds sing to us all night long at some parts of the year. You know these birds came by their name because they deserve it. They mock or mimic every bird they hear, including the hens and turkeys. We have wondered why they do not talk as well, but we have never known them to. One mocker in our yard gives us the postman's whistle every afternoon an hour before it is due. Strangers rush to their gates, thinking their mail has come, while the mocker laughs at them from the tip-top branch of a eucalyptus tree, seventy or eighty feet above them. If you have just come to California, you are likely to be waked up in the middle of the night by the sound of your pet chickens peeping, or the turkeys crying as if in distress, and you imagine all the fowls in the coops are being carried off. Perhaps you will snatch a broom or an apron and run out quickly, sure of finding the marauder. From the top of his tree, safe out of your reach, that little rascal of a mocker will "peep" again, and then you will understand that it is only one of his jokes. Often they sing beautiful songs by the hour, and we lie awake to hear, laughing at the racket, or holding our breath to catch the last note of some wonderful melody. Besides the mocking-bird you may hear the owl, though you cannot be quite sure that it is not the mocker again. In the dusk, when it is just light enough to see a little, you may catch a glimpse of the "Poor Will," darting about for his supper among the belated gnats and flies. When this bird came to California he left off saying "Whip Poor Will,"[21] and so has but two notes. "Poor Will" is not whipped in this beautiful land. [21] _Phaenoptilus nuttalli californicus._ One will have to get up very early to see the fun among the birds in the morning. A chirp in the twilight, the breakfast bell ringing from the throat of the first bird up, and then how astir are the trees and the bushes, and the whole yard or field! It is impossible for you to tell where the little songsters came from so suddenly, just as it was impossible for you to tell where they went to sleep the night before. If there is a tub of water by the pump, the rim of it will soon be covered by the birds; or, better still, if there is a leaky hydrant, or a spring in the berry patch, or a puddle in the orchard, there you will see what is sure to make you laugh.