92 
YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT. 
modulations of voice, as sometimes to seem at a considerable 
distance, and instantly as if just beside you ; now on this hand, 
now on that ; so that, from these manoeuvres of ventriloquism, 
you are utterly at a loss to ascertain from what particular spot 
or quarter they proceed. If the weather be mild and serene, 
with clear moonlight, he continues gabbling in the same strange 
dialect, with very little intermission, during the whole night, 
as if disputing with his own echoes ; but probably with a design 
of inviting the passing females to his retreat ; for, when the 
season is farther advanced, they are seldom heard during the 
night. 
About the middle of May they begin to build. Their nest 
is usually fixed in the upper part of a bramble bush, in an 
almost impenetrable thicket ; sometimes in a thick vine or 
small cedar ; seldom more than four or five feet from the 
ground. It is composed outwardly of dry leaves ; within these 
are laid thin strips of the bark of grape-vines, and the inside 
is lined with fibrous roots of plants, and fine dry grass. The 
female lays four eggs, slightly flesh-coloured, 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 repeated jerks, as if highly irritated, 
or, as is vulgarly said, “ dancing mad.” All this noise and 
gesticulation we must attribute to his extreme affection for his 
mate and young; and when we consider the great distance 
which in all probability he comes, the few young produced at 
