588 BULLETIN 203, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



open, but move along by short stages, keeping concealed for the most 

 part in the dense thickets of shrubbery and vines, and are largely 

 silent. But when they reach their chosen breeding grounds, the 

 males proclaim their presence and advertise their home territory by 

 the medley of whistling, chuckling, barking, and mewing sounds, 

 coupled with the curious eccentricities that have made them famous. 

 When the females arrive, about a week later, the males greet them 

 with a richer, more musical, and more pleasing performance, which 

 P. A. Taverner (1906) describes very well, as follows: 



His love-song is a woodland idyl and makes up for much of his shortcomings. 

 From some elevated perch from which he can survey the surrounding waste for 

 a considerable distance, he flings himself into the air — straight up he goes on 

 fluttering wings — legs dangling, head raised, his whole being tense and spasmodic 

 with ecstasy. As he rises he pours fourth a flood of musical gurgles, and whistles 

 that drop from him in silvery cascades to the ground, like sounds of fairy chimes. 

 As he reaches the apex of his flight his wings redouble their beatings, working 

 straight up and down, while the legs hanging limply down remind the observer 

 of those drawings we sometimes see from the brushes of Japanese artists. He 

 holds his hovering position for an instant, then the music gradually dies away ; 

 and, as he sinks toward the ground, he regains his natural poise, and seeks 

 another perch like that from which he started. What mistress could turn a deaf 

 ear to such love-making as that? And we can rest assured that his does not. 



Nesting. — Although the eastern yellow-breasted chat has nested a 

 number of times, rather irregularly, in Massachusetts, I have never 

 found it farther north and east than Connecticut, where it is a regular 

 and common breeder. 



I find three typical nests recorded in my notes, found near New 

 Haven, Conn., on June 3 and 4, 1910. The first was 3 feet from the 

 ground in a clump of dogwood and hawthorn bushes ; and the second 

 was in a thicket of small black birches overgrown with catbriers, 30 

 inches above ground; both of these nests were rather insecurely at- 

 tached to their supports ; the locality was a large neglected tract of 

 cut-over land, grown up to scattered clumps of bushes and sprouting 

 stumps. The third nest was only 2 feet up in a small huckleberry 

 bush in a scrubby field, full of underbrush and scattered red cedars. 

 The three nests were all much alike, consisting of a foundation of dead 

 leaves, coarse straws, and weed stems, on which was built a firmly 

 woven inner nest of grapevine bark, thinly lined with fine weed stems 

 and grasses. 



A. Dawes Du Bois has sent me his notes on two nests found in 

 Sangamon County, 111., on May 30, 1908. The first of these was "two 

 feet from the ground in a clump of blackberry briers, in a pasture 

 thicket. It was constructed outwardly of small vine and weed stems, 

 then a thick layer of dried oak leaves which formed the body of the 

 nest. There was a slight lining of grasses and fine plant stems, inside 

 the layer of leaves. A few shreds of coarse grass were added just 



