64 Birds Every Child Should Know 
paper all the multitude of queer sounds with 
which the bird amuses himself. He might be 
mistaken for a dozen different birds and animals 
in as many minutes. 
Such a secretive roysterer is he that you may 
rarely see him, however often you may hear his 
voice when he is hidden beyond sight in partial 
clearings or the bushy, briery, thickety openings 
in the woods. As he seems to delight in keep- 
ing pursuers off by a natural fence of barbed 
wire, the cat brier, wild blackberry, raspberry, 
and rose bushes are among his favourite plants. 
But if you will sit down quietly near his home, 
your patience will probably be rewarded by the 
sight of this largest of the warblers, with olive 
green upper parts, a conspicuous white line 
running from his bill around his eye and another 
along his throat, and a bright yellow breast 
shading to grayish white underneath. He is 
over an inch longer than the English sparrow. 
His wife looks just like him. 
The zany at the circus can go through no 
more clownish tricks than the chat. See him, 
a mere bunch of feathers, dance and balance in 
the air, now fluttering, now falling as if he had 
been shot, or turning aerial somersaults, now 
rising and trailing his legs behind him like a 
stork, now dropping out of sight in the thickest 
part of the thicket. The instant he spies you, 
Chut-chut, he scolds from the briars. Shy, 
