(ee Ste a es SS Se ee et SSS ee] 
60 YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT. 
thickets. It arrives in Pennsylvania about the middle, or last week, of 
April, and begins to build its nest about the middle of May: this is 
fixed on the ground, among the dried leaves, in the very depth of a 
thicket of briers, sometimes arched over, and a small hole left for en- 
trance; the materials are dry leaves and fine grass, lined with coarse 
hair; the eggs are five, white or semi-transparent, marked with 
specks of reddish brown, The young leave the nest about the 22d of 
June; and a second brood is often raised in the same season. Early 
in September they leave us, returning to the south. 
This pretty little species is four inches and three quarters long, and 
six inches and a quarter in extent ; back, wings, and tail, green olive, 
which also covers the upper part of the neck, but approaches to cine- 
reous on the crown; the eyes are inserted in a band of black, which 
passes from the front, on both sides, reaching half way down the neck ; 
this is bounded above by another band of white, deepening into light 
blue; throat, breast, and vent, brilliant yellow ; belly, a fainter tinge 
of the same color; inside coverts of the wings,-also yellow; tips 
and inner vanes of the wings, dusky brown; tail, cuneiform, dusky, 
edged with olive green; bill, black, straight, slender, of the true 
Motacilla form, though the bird itself was considered as a species of 
Thrush by Linneus, but very properly removed ‘to the genus Mota- 
cilla by Gmelin; legs, flesh colored; iris of the eye, dark hazel. 
The female wants the black band through the eye, has the bill brown, 
and the throat of a much paler yellow. This last, I have good reason 
to suspect, has been described by Europeans as a separate species ; 
and that from Louisiana, referred to in the synonymes, appears evidently 
the same as the former, the chief difference, according to Buffon, be- 
ing in its wedged tail, which is likewise the true form of our own 
species; so that this error corrected will abridge the European 
nomenclature of two species. Many more examples of this kind will 
occur in the course of our descriptions. 
YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT.*—PIPRA POLYGLOTTA. — 
Fig. 20. * 
Muscicapa viridis, Gmel. Syst. i. 936.— Le Merle vert de la Caroline, Buffon, iii. 
396.— Chattering Flycatcher, Arct. Zool. ii. No. 266.— Lath. Synop. iii. 350, 48. 
— Garrulus australis, Bartram, 290.— Peale’s Museum, No. 6661. 
ICTERIA VIRIDIS.— Bonaparte. 
Ieteria dumicola, Vieill. Gal. des Ois. pl. 85, p. 119.—Icteria viridis, Bonap. 
Synop. p. 69. 
Tuis is a very singular bird. In its voice and manners, and the 
habit it has of keeping concealed, while shifting and vociferating around 
* The Prince of Musignano remarks, when speaking of this bird, in his excellent ° 
Obsersations on the Nomenclature of Wilson's Ornithology, “Tt is not a little re- 
