YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT. 
Icteria virens BAIRD. 
PLaTeE XV. Fic. 3. 
LL PARTS of our grand country are exceedingly rich in beautiful and attractive 
CO birds and excellent songsters, even the dry and hot cactus regions of Arizona 
and south-western Texas. The Warblers, with few exceptions, are beautifully colored 
and highly interesting birds. They are associated in my mind with the flowering and 
perfume of the magnolias, tea roses, and Cape jasmines of the South, with the gorgeous 
flowers of the odontoglossums, lelias, oncidiums, lycastes, and other epiphytal orchids 
of Mexico and Central America, with the rosy-white flower masses of our northern 
apple trees and the genial air of the, too rare, spring days of May. Many of our birds 
vie in brilliant colors with the birds of the tropics. What a refined and striking bird is 
the Scarlet Tanager, clad in the most intense vermilion-scarlet and deep black. The 
Baltimore Oriole in its orange and black colors among the high and pendulous branches 
of our magnificent American elms, or among the flowering apple trees of the orchard, 
is a picture which can be fully appreciated by a poetical and noble mind only! In the 
South we frequently find thickets of hollies covered with dense masses of elegant 
leaves and glowing red berries, inhabited by numbers of beautiful red Cardinal Gros- 
beaks. On sunny February days we may hear in these localities the far sounding and 
charming songs of these birds on all sides, suggesting the words what cheer! what 
cheer, what cheer! If our way leads us through one of the orange groves, rose and 
ornamental gardens of southern Louisiana, we will be surprised by the beauty and 
lively strain of the Nonpareil, a bird with violet-blue head, green back, and vermilion 
throat, breast, and under-side. The name, which is of French origin, means the incom- 
parable, and, indeed, the bird has no peer among all our feathered songsters. Its 
nearest relative is the fine ‘Lazuli Bunting of California, and the deep blue Indigobird of 
our Middle and Northern States. This last named songster is, like the Blue Grosbeak, 
of the South, one of our most beautiful birds, but being shy and retired, it is not so 
well known and so highly appreciated as it deserves. The Rose-breasted Grosbeak of 
our woodland borders is a magnificent songster, whose strain in the dusk of evening is 
especially enchanting and full of poetry. But all of these are far surpassed by the 
modestly attired Mockingbird, the ‘“‘king of song,’ the bird which does not find its rival 
among the feathered tribe. If you have one or more of these or other songsters in 
your garden and orchard, dear reader, do not disturb them. Give them your protection 
and care. Keep the egg hunters and collectors away from your premises, and these 
birds will pay you thousandfold by their charming music, lively manners, merry gambols, 
and unequalled happiness. 
Among the birds of the woodland shrubbery, the small trees and bushes entangled 
with grape vines and other creepers, the Cardinal Redbird, the White-eyed Vireo, the 
Catbird, and the YeELLow-prEasTED Cuat, the subject of this sketch, are in south- 
