THE YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT. 583 



ures overgrown with brambles and bushes, and to the 

 thickets. Here, with every facility for concealment, it de- 

 lights to tantalize the most patient observer with its weird, 

 ventriloquial, and almost endlessly varied, vocal perform- 

 ances. There are soft, subdued notes, half whisper, half 

 whistle; then abrupt, explosive sounds, reminding one of 

 the rattling loquacity of the Catbird or the Thrasher; these 

 again are succeeded by deep, guttural cJiucks, as of certain 

 Thrushes or Blackbirds; or there may be the most sprightly 

 twittering, or a cawing and mewing — and all these so hur- 

 ried and closely connected, and in such a variety of tones and 

 modulations, as almost to bewilder and astound the listener. 

 Meanwhile the bird keeps for the most part wholly out of 

 sight, and in its concealment changes places so rapidly as 

 to keep the listener on the most excited alert. He knows 

 not w^here to expect the next burst of merriment, and when 

 it breaks upon him he is equally at a loss where to locate 

 it. During moonlight nights, and especially before the 

 arrival of the females, this strange vocal exercise may be 

 heard at almost any time between the twilights. 



If you should approach its haunts in the nesting period, 

 the bird may mount almost perpendicularly into the air; 

 and with dangling feet and legs, and an abundance of excited 

 noise, perform the most ludicrous gesticulations. Occa- 

 sionally it will seem to abandon its coyness, and mounting 

 to the top of some bare stump, in open sight, will give its 

 recitative as fearlessly as a Chewink. 



The nest, but a few feet from the ground, and ensconced 

 away in the brambles and thickets, is rather bulkily built of 

 dried leaves and strips of fibrous bark, and lined with fine 

 rootlets and grasses. The 3-4 eggs, 1.00 X .80, are round- 

 ish, of a delicate flesh-color, spotted and specked with light 

 brown or red, mostly at the large end. I once found the 



