124 BIRDS OF LA PLATA 
invariably greet his approach with a loud vigorous 
remonstrance. 
In October the birds break up their companies to 
pair. Sometimes they breed on the open plain in a 
large cardoon thistle, but a thick bush or low tree is 
preferred. The nest is like that of a Thrush, being 
deep, compactly made of dry grass and slender sticks, 
plastered inside with mud, and lined with hair or 
soft, dry grass. It is, however, deeper and more 
symmetrical than the Thrush’s nest, and it is some- 
times plastered with cow-dung instead of with mud. 
The eggs are four, very long, white, and abundantly 
spotted with deep red, the spots becoming confluent 
at the large end. 
The Yellow-breast is never seen to quarrel with its 
fellows or with other birds, and it is possibly due to 
its peaceful disposition that it is more victimised by 
the parasitical Molothrus than any other bird. I have 
frequently found their nests full of parasitical eggs, 
as many as fourteen and in one case sixteen in one 
nest. In some seasons all the nests I found and 
watched were eventually abandoned by the birds on 
account of the number of parasitical eggs dropped 
in them. I have also so frequently found parasitical 
eggs on the ground under the nest that I believe the 
Yellow-breast throws out some of these foreign eggs, 
and in one instance I was quite sure that this had 
happened. The nest was in a cardoon bush and 
contained five eggs—two of the Yellow-breast and 
three parasitical. These three were of the variety 
most thickly mottled with red, and consequently 
