The Western Chat 



Taken in Sacramento 



NEST AND EGGS OF WESTERN CHAT 



minutes past, and we flushed a snickering Chat, instead. 



It is perhaps as a singer of the night that one finds the versatile Chat 

 most impressive. The bird has no compunction about awakening a 

 tired ornithologist; and the prudent camper will, therefore, measure his 

 hours so as to allow for several nocturnal interruptions. It is that incur- 

 able malady of the heart again ! Chaucer might have said of our hero as 

 he did of the knight : 



"So hote he loved that by the nightertale 

 He slep na more than doth the nightingale." 

 Be that as it may, the Western Chat will assail the midnight with gut- 

 tural reproaches, explosive cackles, cat-calls and shrieks until the would-be 

 sleeper is fairly frenzied. Then the bird will pour on a sudden ointment 

 of sound in tones of richest ravishment. The mollified sleeper sinks to 

 rest again amidst a silence palpable. 



Skilled minstrel though he is, the Western Chat, like the eastern bird, 

 has small taste for architecture. A careless mass of dead leaves and 

 coarse grasses is assembled in a bush at a height of three or four feet ; and 

 a lining of finer grasses, when present at all, is so distinct as to permit of 

 removal without injury to the bulk of the structure. From three to five 

 eggs are laid, and so jealously guarded that the birds are said to destroy 

 the eggs once visited by man. So cautious are the Chats that even after 



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