260 YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT. 
as if unaware of any intrusion upon his privacy, and so resonant and varying are his 
notes, that they confuse the ear as to the spot from which they come, while his yellow 
breast so completely harmonizes with the green leaves and sunlight, that he is with 
difficulty discovered. It is to his rapid and sonorous totes, quick motions or perfect 
quiet, with harmonious surroundings, that he owes the reputation for ventriloquism 
which he has obtained; and it may be said of his reputation for mimicry, that he has 
no need to borrow notes from any other bird, and does not knowingly do so. 
“Before the breeding season is over it becomes as silent as during the spring 
migration, and leaves for the South as stealthily as it came.” 
In Dr. Elliott Coues’ “Birds of the Colorado Valley” I find the following charm- 
ingly written classical sketch of this singular bird: 
“The common Chat is a migratory bird of general diffusion during the movement 
and in the breeding season throughout the Eastern United States, as far north at least 
as Massachusetts and Dakota, though it is not abundant north of the Middle States. 
Wherever Chats may be found, they are of this species, excepting in the Middle and 
Western Provinces. No Chats are known in the West Indies; but the birds migrate in 
the fall beyond our limits, through Mexico and into Central America. Their manner of 
migration is somewhat uncertain; we do not know that they ever -make long-continued 
flights overhead, and rather presume that they come skulking through the bushes. But 
the fact that their ordinary flight is wayward, desultory, and never long-continued, is 
no proof that the emergency of the migration does not develop different and much 
better sustained powers of the wing. 
“However this may be, no sooner is the ardor of occasion stimulated by the 
presence of the females than the gay and gaudy Chats develop those eccentricities that 
make them famous. They grow too restless to abide the covert they have chosen for 
their home, and are seen incessantly in motion, flitting with jerky movement from one 
bush and brier patch to another, giving vent to long-pent emotions in the oddest notes 
imaginable. Such a medley of whistling, chuckling, barking, and mewing sounds proceeds 
from no other bird, unless it be the Mockingbird itself, to whom all possibilities of song 
are open. During such performances the Chats seem sedulous to keep concealed, dis- 
playing ingenuity and perversity in thwarting our best efforts to catch them at their 
tricks. The notes, in all their infinite variety, come now from this and now from that 
spot in the bushes, shifting from point to point as we peer eagerly into the tangled 
underbrush to catch a glimpse of the tantalizing musician. Such restlessness, and all 
this variation in the rendering, have much the effect of ventriloquism, and we have not 
seldom to acknqwledge that the Chat has fairly beaten us. But his coloring is brilliant; 
he has, moreover, a fancy to return again to some particular spot already chosen as his 
stage; so that if we discover it, and keep so still as not to cause the bird anxiety, nor 
yet to rouse his ire, we shall most likely see him take his stand again to swell his 
golden throat afresh with the fantasy of song. 
“His nuptial song, I should observe, is something very different from the medley 
of sounds, not all of which are pleasing, that are heard when each Chat, as one per- 
former in the orchestra, first tunes his curious pipe. Such prelude, after several days’ 
essay, is changed into the rich, voluminous ode with which the bird inaugurates a new 
