YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT. 
91 
which I am acquainted, and has considerable claims to origi- 
nality of character. It arrives in Pennsylvania about the first 
week in May, and returns to the south again as soon as its 
young are able for the journey, which is usually about the 
middle of August ; its term of residence here being scarcely 
four months. The males generally arrive several days before 
the females, a circumstance common with many other of our 
birds of passage. 
When he has once taken up his residence in a favourite 
situation, which is almost always in close thickets of hazel, 
brambles, vines, and thick underwood, he becomes very 
jealous of his possessions, and seems offended at the least 
intrusion ; scolding every passenger as soon as they come 
within view, in a great variety of odd and uncouth mono- 
syllables, which it is difficult to describe, but which may be 
readily imitated, so as to deceive the bird himself, and draw 
him after you for half a quarter of a mile at a time, as I have 
sometimes amused myself in doing, and frequently without 
once seeing him. On these occasions, his responses are con- 
stant and rapid, strongly expressive of anger and anxiety ; and 
while the bird itself remains unseen, the voice shifts from place 
to place, among the bushes, as if it proceeded from a spirit. 
First is heard a repetition of short notes, resembling the 
whistling of the wings of a duck or teal, beginning loud and 
rapid, and falling lower and slower, till they end in detached 
notes ; then a succession of others, something like the barking 
of young puppies, is followed by a variety of hollow, guttural 
sounds, each eight or ten times repeated, more like those 
proceeding from the throat of a quadruped than that of a bird ; 
which are succeeded by others not unlike the mewing of a cat, 
but considerably hoarser. All these are uttered with great 
vehemence, in such different keys, and with such peculiar 
arranged in Muscicapa, by Gmelin, Latham, and Pennant ; in Turdus, by 
Brisson and Buffon ; in Ampelis,loy Sparrman ; and in Tanagra, by Desmarest. 
I was at first inclined to consider it as a Vireo ; but, after having dwelt more 
upon the characters and habits of this remarkable species, I have concluded to 
adopt Icteria as an independent genus, agreeably to Vieillot .” — Ed. 
