A common name for this bird, the largest of the warblers, is the Yellow
Mockingbird. It is found in the eastern United States, north to the
Connecticut Valley and Great Lakes; west to the border of the Great
Plains; and in winter in eastern Mexico and Guatemala. It frequents the
borders of thickets, briar patches, or wherever there is a low, dense
growth of bushes--the thornier and more impenetrable the better.
"After an acquaintance of many years," says Frank M. Chapman, "I frankly
confess that the character of the Yellow-Crested Chat is a mystery to
me. While listening to his strange medley and watching his peculiar
actions, we are certainly justified in calling him eccentric, but that
there is a method in his madness no one who studies him can doubt."
By many observers this bird is dubbed clown or harlequin, so peculiar
are his antics or somersaults in the air; and by others "mischief
maker," because of his ventriloquistic and imitating powers, and the
variety of his notes. In the latter direction he is surpassed only by
the Mockingbird.
The mewing of a cat, the barking of a dog, and the whistling sound
produced by a Duck's wings when flying, though much louder, are common
imitations with him. The last can be perfectly imitated by a good
whistler, bringing the bird instantly to the spot, where he will dodge
in and out among the bushes, uttering, if the whistling be repeated, a
deep toned emphatic _tac_, or hollow, resonant _meow_.
In the mating season he is the noisiest bird in the woods. At this time
he may be observed in his wonderful aerial evolutions, dangling his legs
and flirting his tail, singing vociferously the while--a sweet song
different from all his jests and jeers--and descending by odd jerks to
the thicket. After a few weeks he abandons these clown-like maneuvers
and becomes a shy, suspicious haunter of the depths of the thicket,
contenting himself in taunting, teasing, and misleading, by his variety
of calls, any bird, beast, or human creature within hearing.
All these notes are uttered with vehemence, and with such strange and
various modulations as to appear near or distant, in the manner of a
ventriloquist. In mild weather, during moonlight nights, his notes are
heard regularly, as though the performer were disputing with the echoes
of his own voice.
"Perhaps I ought to be ashamed to confess it," says Mr. Bradford Torrey,
after a visit to the Senate and House of Representatives at Washington,
"but after all, the congressman in feathers interested me most. I
thought indeed, that the _Chat_ might well enough have been elected to
the lower house. His volubility and waggish manners would have made him
quite at home in that assembly, while his orange colored waistcoat would
have given him an agreeable conspicuity. But, to be sure, he would have
needed to learn the use of tobacco."
The nest of the Chat is built in a thicket, usually in a thorny bush or
thick vine five feet above the ground. It is bulky, composed exteriorly
of dry leaves, strips of loose grape vine bark, and similar materials,
and lined with fine grasses and fibrous roots. The eggs are three to
five in number, glossy white, thickly spotted with various shades of
rich, reddish brown and lilac; some specimens however have a greenish
tinge, and others a pale pink.