210 ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. 



(lifficiilt to describe or imitate, except by a whistling ; in which case 

 tlie bird may be made to approach, but seldom within sight. His 

 res2:)onses on such occasions are constant and rapid, expressive of 

 anger and anxiety ; and, still unseen, his voice shifts from place to 

 place amidst the thicket, like the haunting of a fairy. Some of 

 these notes resemble the whistling of the wings of a flying duck, 

 at first loud and rapid, then sinking till they seem to end in single 

 notes. A succession of other tones are now heard, some like the 

 barking of young puppies, with a variety of hollow, guttural, un- 

 common sounds, frequently repeated, and terminated occasionally 

 by something like the mewing of a cat, but hoarser ; a tone, to 

 which all our Vireos, particularly the young, have frequent recur- 

 rence. All these notes are uttered with vehemence, and with such 

 strange and various modulations as to appear near or distant, like 

 the manoeuvres of ventriloquism. In mild weather also, when the 

 moon shines, this gabbling, with exuberance of life and emotion, is 

 heard nearly throughout the night, as if the performer were dis- 

 puting with the echoes of his own voice. 



" About the middle of May, soon after their arrival, the icterias 

 begin to build, fixing the nest commonly in a bramble-bush, in an 

 interlaced thicket, a vine, or small cedar, four or five feet from the 

 ground. The outside is usually composed of dry leaves, or thin 

 strips of grape-vine bark, and with root-fibres and dry, slender 

 blades of grass. The eggs are about four, pale flesh-colored, spotted 

 all over with brown or dull-red. The young are hatched in the 

 short period of twelve days, and leave the nest about the second 

 week in June." 



Four eggs in my collection exliibit the following dimen- 

 sions : .71 by .GO inch, .70 by .60 inch, .68 by .59 inch, .67 

 by .58 inch. 



The food of this bird consists of those small insects and 

 spiders that are foimd in the thick shrubbery of brier patches, 

 and on tlie ground among the fallen leaves. It also occa- 

 sionally captures flying insects in the manner of the Vireos ; 

 and this fact has caused it, more than its peculiarities of 

 form, to be classed by some authors with those birds. 



By the first week in September, none are seen in New 



