Yellow-breasted Chat Gallery

Icteria virens

eBird gives this description of the Yellow-breasted Chat:  Long-tailed tanager-like bird with thick bill. Bright yellow throat and breast, contrasting white spectacles, and dull olive-green upperparts. Known for its skulking habits. Often difficult to see in dense thickets, shrubby areas, and field edges. In breeding season, however, males sit on conspicuous perches to sing. Song is variable series of slow whistles, hoots, and chatters. Feeds mainly on insects; also fruit in winter.  All About Birds adds this descriptive information about the Yellow-breasted Chat:  The Yellow-breasted Chat offers a cascade of song in the spring, when males deliver streams of whistles, cackles, chuckles, and gurgles with the fluidity of improvisational jazz. It’s seldom seen or heard during the rest of the year, when both males and females skulk silently in the shadows of dense thickets, gleaning insects and berries for food. The largest of our warblers, the chat is a widespread breeder in shrubby habitats across North America, venturing to Central America for the winter.

I had seen several Yellow-breasted Chats at Warbler Woods Bird Sanctuary, but had not been able to get a photo of one.  My luck changed when I visited Kickapoo Cavern State Park on the morning of August 30, 2020.  That day a Yellow-breasted Chat showed up for a bath and I was able to get several passable photos. 

Yellow-breasted Chat at Kickapoo Caverns State Park, August 30, 2020.
Yellow-breasted Chat starting to take a bath at Kickapoo Cavern S. P., August 30, 2020.
One more pic of the Yellow-breasted Chat I watched at Kickapoo Cavern State Park, August 30, 2020.


“Cool Facts” about the Yellow-breasted Chat from All About Birds…

  • The Yellow-breasted Chat has traditionally been placed in the New World warbler family, although it is an unusual one: it’s larger than other warblers, has a more varied repertoire of songs and calls, and also differs in certain aspects of behavior and anatomy.
  • Though a small percentage of males have two mates at once, most appear to be monogamous during the breeding season. Female aggression may help enforce this monogamy. However, some infidelity happens behind the scenes: in a Kentucky study, one-third of nests contained at least one chick sired by another male.
  • Brown-headed Cowbirds often lay their eggs in nests of Yellow-breasted Chats. Some breeding pairs will desert a parasitized nest, while others accept the cowbird egg and raise the chick as their own.
  • The oldest Yellow-breasted Chat on record, a female, was at least 11 years old when recaptured and released at an Arizona banding station in 2015.