l6o NESTS AND EGGS OF B1BD^\ 



100. THE YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT. 



ICTERIA VIRENS (L.) Bd. 



Chat; Yellowr-breasted Icteria; Ghost-bird (Delaware Indians) ; Yellow 

 Chat (New Euglaud). 



This is a Soitthern species, extending northward on the coast 

 to Connecticut, thence westward to the central Mississippi Val- 

 ley as far as the Plains, and southward into Mexico and Gaute- 

 mala, whence they also reach northward throughout California. 

 The species includes two varieties. 



A very conspicuous bird in all its manners and always highly 

 attractive, an unusual amount of matter has been written about 

 the chat, — and written well. " It is difficult to observe their arri- 

 val with precision, unless the collector is carefully on the watch 

 for them, for they come furtively, and for some little time keep 

 most sedulously concealed in their favorite retreats amidst dense 

 shrubbery. Such period of concealment probably corresponds to 

 the interval between the arrival of the males and the following 

 after of their more dilatory mates, which may be several days 

 or even a week." Both sexes are to be seen in New Jersey by 

 May lo. It is at this wooing time that the chats develop those 

 eccentricities that make them famous. "They grow too restless to 

 abide the covert they have chosen for their home, and are seen 

 incessantly in motion, flitting with jerky movement from one bush 

 and brier-patch to another, giving vent to long-pent emotions in 

 the oddest notes imaginable." To describe this crazylove-song, 

 to which for wild abandon that of the bobolink bears no compari- 

 son, and that of the cat-bird yields in volubility, is beyond my 

 scope. I must refer you to Dr. Coues's Birds of the Colorado 

 Valley, and to an essay by Dr. C. C. Abbott, in Science Gossip 

 for January, 1876. Yet I cannot refrain fror.i quoting a single 

 paragraph from the first author : 



His nuptial song, I should observe, is something very different from the 

 medley of sounds, not all of which are pleasing, that are heard when each 

 ehat, as one performer in the orchestra, firit tunes his curious pipe. Such 



