The Yellow-breasted Chat 
63 
the sides of her plump little body, which are 
yellowish brown, shade into grayish white 
underneath. Sometimes you may catch her 
carrying weeds, strips of bark, broad grasses, 
tendrils, reeds, and leaves for the outside of 
her deep cradle, and finer grasses for its lining, 
to a spot on the ground where plants and low 
bushes help conceal it. She does not build so 
beautiful a nest as the yellow warbler, but like 
her she, too, poor thing, sometimes siiffers 
from the sneaking visits of the cowbird. Un- 
happily, she is not so clever as her cousin, 
for she meekly consents to hatch out the cow- 
bird’s egg and let the big, greedy interloper 
crowd and worry and starve her own brood. 
Why does the cowardly cowbird always choose 
a victim smaller than herself? 
THE YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT 
“ Now he barks like a puppy, then quacks 
like a duck, then rattles like a kingfisher, then 
squalls like a fox, then caws like a crow, then 
mews like a cat — C-r-r-r-r-r-whrr-that's it — 
Chee-quack, cluck, yit-yit-yit-now — hit it — 
ir-r-r-r-wheu-caw-caw-cut, cut-tea-boy-who, who- 
mew, mew,” writes John Burroughs of this 
rollicking polyglot, the chat; but not even 
that close student of nature could set down on 
