62 YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT. 
wardly of dry leaves; within these dre laid thin strips of the bark ot 
grape-vines, and the inside is lined with fibrous roots of plants, and 
fine, dry grass. The female lays four eggs, slightly flesh colored, and 
speckled all over with spots of brown or dull red. The young are 
hatched in twelve days; and make their first excursion from the nest 
about the second week in June. A friend of mine, an amateur in 
Canary Birds, placed one of the Chat’s eggs under a hen Canary, who 
brought it out; but it died on the second day, though she was so 
solicitous to feed and preserve it, that her own eggs, which required 
two days more sitting, were lost through her attention to this. 
While the female of the Chat is sitting, the cries of the male are 
still more loud and incessant. When once aware that you have seen 
him, he is less solicitous to conceal himself, and will sometimes 
mount up into the air, almost perpendicularly, to the height of thirty 
or forty feet, with his legs hanging; descending as he rose, by re- 
peated jerks, as if highly irritated, or, as is vulgarly said, “ dancing 
mad.” All this noise and gesticulation we must attribute to his ex- 
treme affection for his mate and young; and when we consider the 
great distance which in all probability he comes, the few young pro- 
duced at atime, and that seldom more than once in the season, we 
can see the wisdom of Providence very manifestly in the ardency of 
-his passions. 
Mr. Catesby seems to have first figured the Yellow-breasted Chat ; 
and the singularity of its manners has not escaped him. After re- 
peated attempts to shoot one of them, he found himself completely 
baffled, and was obliged, as he himself informs us, to employ an 
{Indian for that purpose, who did not sucgeed without: exercising. all 
his ingenuity. Catesby also observed its dancing manceuvres, and 
supposed that it always flew with its legs extended; but it is only m 
these paroxysms of rage and anxiety that this is done, as I have par- 
ticularly observed. ; ; 
The food of these birds consists chiefly of large black beetles, and 
other coleopterous insects; I have also found whortleberries frequently 
in their stomach, in great quantities, as well as several other sorts of 
berries.* They are very numerous in the neighborhood of Philadel- 
phia, particularly on the borders of rivulets, and other watery situa- 
tions, in hedges, thickets, é&c., but are seldom seen in the forest, even 
where there is underwood. Catesby indeed asserts, that they are only 
found on the banks of large rivers, two or three hundred miles from 
the sea; but, though this may be the case in South Carolina, yet in 
Maryland and New Jersey, and also in New York, I have met with 
these birds within two hours’ walk of the sea, and in some places 
within less than a mile of the shore. I have not been able to trace 
him to any of the West India Islands; though they certainly retire 
to Mexico, Guiana, and Brazil, having myself seen skins of these 
birds in the possession of a French gentleman, which were brought 
from the two latter countries. : 
‘By recurring to the synonymes at the beginning of this article, it 
will be perceived how much European naturalists have differed in 
* Vieillot mentions the fruit of the Solanum Carolinense as a particular favorite 
of this bird. — Ep. : 
