﻿The Yellow- breasted Chat 133 



perch like that from which he started. What mistress could turn a deaf 

 ear to such love-making as that? And we can rest assured that his does 

 not. Proof ? You will find it in some near-by bush but a few feet from 

 the ground. A nest rather roughly but strongly made, sufficient for its pur- 

 pose, and filled with four or five creamy eggs marked with reddish brown 

 spots and a few lilac flecks, which the mother bird nestles into her golden 

 bosom as tenderly as though neither she nor her jolly spouse ever thought 

 such things as are imputed in former paragraphs. On second thought, per- 

 haps, the previous reflections are base slanders. One cannot gaze upon the 

 happy pair when they suspect no human biped is near, without wondering 

 whether, if we really understood Chat language, we would interpret it just 

 as we do. It may all mean entirely different subject matter, — and then, 

 again, it may not. To human ears it sounds bad and, as Dr. J. M. Wheaton 

 has pointed out, the Chat has a black mouth, and that certainly was not 

 given him for nothing. 



I have often seen it stated that the Chat was a ventriloquist. Some 

 other birds are also pretty generally accused of the same offense, but I could 

 never really substantiate this in any case. True, the notes of some species 

 are difficult to place, but I have observed that it is only the distance that 

 the originator of the sound is from the hearer that is actually mislead- 

 ing, and not the direction from which it comes. True, again, it is somewhat 

 difficult to locate the direction in certain low sibilant notes that seem to 

 have great carrying power, but I never observed any more than this, and I 

 never heard a bird note that actually seemed to come from a false quarter. 

 When one can hardly locate a sound, and sees a locality that looks as though 

 it might contain the origin of it, we are very apt to make our eyesight and 

 judgment influence our ears, and jump at a false conclusion; but this is an 

 entirely different matter from true ventriloquism inasmuch as the origin of 

 the imposture lies in the self-deceit of the hearer, and not in any actively 

 misleading quality in the sound itself. 



