WARBLERS: LONG-TAILED CHAT 
629 
Eggs: Generally 4, white, finely spotted on larger end with dark brown and black, 
sometimes with a few larger spots or lines. 
Food. —Almost wholly insects and spiders, mainly leaf bugs, leaf hoppers, 
tree hoppers, plant lice, scales, and weevils, including the boll weevil, together 
with a few caterpillars and moths. “It is practically wholly insectivorous, and 
the insects it eats are either harmful or of little economic value.” 
General Habits. —Damp brushy thickets, swampy patches of 
rank vegetable growths, and tule marshes are favorite resorts with the 
black-masked Yellow-throat and his yellowish brown mate, who, 
lacking his convenient ear marks, may be recognized by her dingy 
color, her graduated tail and the family chack. Speaking of the male, 
Professor Merrill writes: “This little Yellow-throat always puts me in 
mind of a small boy with a mask. Passing along patches of big sun- 
dowel's or in thickets of any kind one hears 1 wichity , wichity , wichity 9 
and, if he knows the maker of the sound, smiles with delightful antici¬ 
pation and pleasant memory. A little patient waiting and watching 
nearby and the sound stops a while and then, where you least expect, 
peering out from behind a leaf, is the little black-mask, overcome 
with curiosity to see you, and, you can imagine, making silently merry 
to have slipped so upon the intruder. But with one glance he slips out 
of sight and again comes 1 wichity , wichity, wichity 7 ” (MS). 
Additional Literature.—Finley, W. L., American Birds, 35-41, 1907.— 
Miller, O. T., Upon the Tree-tops, 141-147, 1897; With the Birds in Maine, 
282-285, 1904. 
LONG-TAILED CHAT: Icteria virens longicauda Lawrence 
Plate 64 
Description. — Male: Length (skins) 6.3-7.3 inches, wing 2.9-3.3, tail 3-3.4, 
bill .5-.6, tarsus 1-1.1. Female: Length (skins) 6.4-7 inches, wing 2.9-3.1, tail 
2.8-3.2, bill .5-.6, tarsus 1-1.1. Bill stout, curved; wings much rounded, tail long 
and rounded, feet stout. Adult male in spring and summer: Upper parts, including 
wings and tail, grayish olive-green, crescentic mark on lower eyelid, superciliary and 
malar stripe, white; lores, and line under eye, black; anterior underparts and wing 
linings bright yellow, posterior, white. Adult female in spring and summer: Similar 
to spring male but sometimes duller, lores grayish, lower mandible usually light col¬ 
ored basally. (Adults in fall and w’inter, similar, but upperparts brighter, the flanks 
more buffy and the bill brighter (Ridgway).] Young: Upperparts olive, lores gray, 
throat whitish, chest and sides grayish; rest of underparts w r hite. 
Range. —Breeds in Sonoran Zones from southern British Columbia, Montana, 
and North Dakota south to Guanajuato and Jalisco; winters on tableland and west 
coast from Chihuahua to Oaxaca. 
State Records. —Comparatively few notes have been recorded of the presence 
of the Long-tailed Chat in New Mexico, but it keeps so well hidden in the bushes 
that it is easily overlooked. [It is common where there are thick bottoms of under¬ 
brush along streams (1916-1918); common about Taos and the Rio Grande bottom 
between Embuda and Espanola, June 21-22, 1924 (Ligon). Along the Santa Fe 
River three or four pairs nest in willows or vines. Fresh eggs, June 10-July 1 
