THE YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT 291 



for as we watched them he went through the queerest 

 courtship we had ever seen. He would sing and parade 

 before his lady love, evidently doing his very best to 

 please her, yet his every act, even his voice, gave the im- 

 pression that he was scolding her with all his might. He 

 gesticulated with every note, sometimes jumping into the 

 air and alighting again, now hanging to a twig with his 

 head down, now performing some other maneuver, but al- 

 ways moving his body with every note uttered. He seemed 

 to be in a perfect delirium of song, but his antics ap- 

 peared anything but graceful to us. Every few minutes he 

 hopped into the air, sometimes to an altitude of eight or 

 ten feet above the female, his feet and legs dangling at full 

 length and his tail jerked up and down until we had to 

 laugh at his awkward appearance. 



Evidently the lady of his choice failed to see anything 

 ludicrous in this performance, for the very next day they 

 began building a nest. This nest was placed not more 

 than two feet from the ground, in a wild gooseberry bush' 

 toward one edge of the thicket. It was perhaps six or 

 seven inches in diameter, built mostly of dry leaves and 

 sticks, bound together with strips of bark taken from our 

 wild grapevine and grass collected from under the hedge 

 near by. It was firmly placed, however, and was neatly 

 lined with horsehairs and a few small willow roots. 



The nest done, the male bird again took up his song and 

 continued to sing from time to time for a number of days. 

 His song sounded as peculiar as his antics looked. Perhaps 

 it can be best described in the words of Audubon, that 

 matchless student of birds. He says of its song, "Some- 

 times the sounds are scarcely louder than whispers, now 

 gain strength, deep gutteral notes roll in slow succession 



