Yellow-breasted Chat: Icteria virens.
PLATE 19. Fig. 1.
Length: 7.50 inches.
Male and Female: Olive-green above; brilliant yellow throat, breast, and wing linings. Whitish belly, white line over eye, and white spot beneath. Brownish glaze on wings and tail. Strong, curving, blue-black beak. Feet lead-coloured.
Song: A varied whistle, with a decided ventriloquistic quality, interspersed with mocking syllables.
Season: Common summer resident. May to September.
Breeds: All through its summer range.
Nest: Bulky, made of leaves, bark, and dead twigs, lined with grasses; placed in briary and inaccessible bushes.
Eggs: 3-4, often of unequal size, white, mottled with buff and spotted with red and lilac.
Range: Eastern United States to the Plains, north to Ontario and southern New England, south, in winter, to eastern Mexico and Guatemala.
A bird easily recognized by its large size and brilliant colour. The Chat has reversed the motto so often preached at children, and is heard more than seen. When seen, however, it is the picture of healthy, well-groomed beauty, with a voice at once powerful and melodious, and a reputation for shyness of disposition, which trait takes the form of a bewitching elusiveness that it seems to know is very attractive.
Its call notes, and the mocking gibes which it utters from the bushes to the distraction of the bewildered passer-by, are wholly different from the fervent spring song. Then it yields to an ecstasy of feeling, and soars singing into the air, trailing its long legs behind like a Heron, and looking, it must be confessed, very foolish; but after a few weeks it abandons its aerial gymnastics and contents itself. with taunting, teasing, and misleading both man, beast, and bird.
On general principles the Chat is a mischief-maker, who starts petty deceits and fosters them, is quick to grasp a situation, knowing at once the most provoking thing to say, and is, in fact, a wood-imp. Near the garden wall there is
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