Yellow-throats and Chats 815 



About six inches long, the first has the upper parts, wings, and tail olive, with a 

 conspicuous white line over the eye, and the under parts white tinged with buff 

 and streaked with black except on throat and middle abdomen, while the 

 latter is similar, but has a buffy line over the eye and the under parts white 

 tinged with sulphur-yellow and somewhere streaked with black. The Water 

 Thrushes, as their name implies, prefer the dense tangles along streams and 

 watercourses, and are shy and resentful of intrusion, but, says Chapman, speak- 

 ing of the first-mentioned species, as a "songster he is without a rival. His 

 song is not to be compared with the clear-voiced carol of the Rose-breasted 

 Grosbeak, the plaintive chant of the Field Sparrow, or the hymn-like melody of 

 the true Thrushes; it is of a different kind. It is the untamable spirit of the bird 

 rendered in music. There is an almost fierce wildness in its ringing notes." 



Yellow-throats. Another interesting group of small, terrestrial Warblers are 

 the Yellow-throats (Geotklypis), of which there are upward of twenty forms widely 

 spread over temperate North America, continental tropical America, and the West 

 Indies. In coloration they are olive-greenish above, and beneath, at least partly, 

 sometimes wholly, yellow, the adult males with the forehead and a portion of the 

 sides of the head black. The best-known species is the Maryland Yellow-throat 

 (G. trichas] of the Atlantic coast district of the United States, breeding in Vir- 

 ginia, Maryland, and the upland portions of the Carolinas and Georgia. It fre- 

 quents the bushes and tangles along streams and swamps, and is constantly on 

 the move, giving voice to its continually repeated song of wichity, wichity, wichity 

 wichity. It builds a bulky nest on or near the ground, generally in a dense 

 tussock of grass, and lays from three to five white, thinly spotted eggs. Slightly 

 larger and with the lower parts more extensively yellow is the otherwise similar 

 Northern Yellow-throat (G. /. brachidactyla), which ranges over the Northeastern 

 States, while the similar but slightly darker and longer-tailed Southern Yellow- 

 throat (G. /. ignota) occurs in southern Atlantic and Gulf coast districts. The 

 Western Yellow-throat (G. t. occidentalis) finds its home over the whole of the 

 arid region of the western United States, the Pacific Yellow-throat (G. t. arizela) on 

 the Pacific coast from British Columbia southward, and the Salt Marsh Yellow- 

 throat (G. t. sinuosa) occurs only in the salt marshes about San Francisco Bay, 

 California. 



Yellow-breasted Chat. The largest North American member of the family 

 is the monotypic Yellow-breasted Chat (Icteria virens), which is a common 

 summer visitor throughout the eastern United States. Nearly seven and a 

 half inches in length, it is plain olive-green or olive-grayish above, with 

 a white line from the bill to the eye, a white eye-ring, and a similar white 

 band along the sides of the throat, while the lores are black, the throat, 

 breast, and upper belly bright yellow, and lower belly white. The Yellow- 

 breasted Chat frequents bushy tangles or thickets in partial clearings and is a 

 rather shy, nervous bird, though with due caution in approaching one may 

 catch glimpses of him as he makes short flights from one bush to another. 

 He has a great variety of notes, whistles, chucks, and querulous chuts, - 

 but he is erratic in both song and action. The nest is a rather bulky 



