The Yellow-breasted Chat 63 



the sides of her plump Httle body, which are 

 yellowish brown, shade into grayish white 

 underneath. Sometimes you may catch her 

 carrying weeds, strips of bark, broad grasses, 

 tendrils, reeds, and leaves for the outside of 

 her deep cradle, and finer grasses for its lining, 

 to a spot on the ground where plants and low 

 bushes help conceal it. She does not build so 

 beautiful a nest as the yellow warbler, but like 

 her she, too, poor thing, sometimes suffers 

 from the sneaking visits of the cowbird. Un- 

 happily, she is not so clever as her cousin, 

 for she meekly consents to hatch out the cow- 

 bird's egg and let the big, greedy interloper 

 crowd and wony and starve her own brood. 

 Why does the cowardly cowbird always choose 

 a victim smaller than herself? 



THE YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT 



"Now he barks like a puppy, then quacks 

 like a duck, then rattles like a kingfisher, then 

 squalls like a fox, then caws like a crow, then 

 mews like a cat — C-r-r-r-r-r-whrr-thsiVs it — 

 Chee-quack, cluck, yit-yit-yit-now — hit it — 

 tr-r-r-r-wheu-caw-caw-cut, cut-tea-boy -who, who- 

 mew, mew," writes John Burroughs of this 

 rollicking polyglot, the chat; but not even 

 that close student of nature could set down on 



