YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT. 
71 
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 1 , were lost through her 
attention to this. 
While the female of the chat is sitting 1 , 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 a time, 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 repeated 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 pur- 
pose, who did not succeed without exercising all his 
ingenuity. Catesby also observed its dancing manoeu- 
vres, and supposed that it always flew with its legs 
extended ; but it is only in these paroxysms of rage 
and anxiety that this is done, as I have particularly 
observed. 
The food of these birds consists chiefly of large black 
beetles, and other shelled 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 neighbourhood of Philadelphia, 
particularly on the borders of rivulets, and other watery 
situations, in hedges, thickets, &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, 
