The eggs, four or five in number, are usually hatched out within twelve days, and in about as many more the young are ready to leave their nest.
While the female is sitting, and still more after the young are hatched, the cries of the male are loud and incessant when his nest is approached. He no longer seeks to conceal himself, but rises in the air, his legs dangling in a peculiar manner, ascending and descending in sudden jerks that betray his great irritation.
The food of this bird consists chiefly of beetles and other insects, and of different kinds of berries and small fruit, and it said to be especially fond of wild strawberries.
Audubon states that in their migrations they move from bush to bush by day, and frequently continue their march by night. Their flight at all times is short and irregular. He also states that when on the ground they squat, jerk their tails, spring on their legs, and are ever in a state of great activity. Although the existence of this bird north of Pennsylvania is generally disputed, I have no doubt that it has always been, and still is, a constant visitor of Massachusetts, and has been found to within a score of miles of the New Hampshire line. Among my notes I find that a nest was found in Brookline, in 1852, by Mr. Theodore Lyman; in Danvers, by Mr. Byron Goodale; in Lynn, by Messrs. Vickary and Welch; and in many other parts of the State. It certainly breeds as far south as Georgia on the coast, and in Louisiana and Texas in the southwest. On the Pacific coast it is replaced by the long-tailed variety, longicauda.
A nest of this species from Concord, Mass., obtained by Mr. B. P. Mann, and now in the collection of the Boston Natural History Society, has a diameter of four inches and a height of three and a half. The cavity has a depth of two and a quarter inches, and is two and a half wide. This is built upon a base of coarse skeleton leaves, and is made of coarse sedges, dried grasses, and stems of plants, and lined with long, dry, and wiry stems of plants, resembling pine-needles. Another from Pomfret, Conn., obtained by Mr. Sessions, is a much larger nest, measuring five inches in diameter and three and three quarters in height. The cup is two and a half inches deep by three in width. It is made of an interweaving of leaves, bark of the grapevine, and stems of plants, and is lined with fine, long wiry stems and pine-needles.
Their eggs are of a slightly rounded oval shape, vary in length from .85 to .95 of an inch, and in breadth from .65 to .70. They have a white ground with a very slight tinge of yellow, and are marked with reddish-brown and a few fainter purplish and lilac spots.
Icteria virens, var. longicauda, Lawr.
LONG-TAILED CHAT.
Icteria longicauda, Lawrence, Ann. N. Y. Lyc. VI, April, 1853, 4.—Baird, Birds N. Am. 1858, 249, pl. xxxiv, fig. 2; Rev. 230.—Sclater, Catal. 42, No. 253.—Finsch, Abh. Nat. Brem. 1870, 331 (Mazatlan).—Cooper, Orn. Cal. 1, 1870, 98. ? Icteria auricollis (Licht. Mus. Berl.), Bon. Consp. 1850, 331.
Sp. Char. Similar to var. virens. Fourth quill longest; third and fifth shorter; first shorter than the seventh. Above ash-color, tinged with olive on the back and neck; the outer surface of the wings and tail olive. The under parts as far as the middle of the belly bright gamboge-yellow, with a tinge of orange; the remaining portions white. The superciliary and maxillary white stripes extend some distance behind the eye. Outer edge of the first primary white. Length, 7 inches; wing, 3.20; tail, 3.70.