Illustration © David Allen Sibley.
Learn more about these drawings.
Text © Kenn Kaufman, adapted from
Lives of North American Birds
Photo: Brian E. Small/Vireo
Yellow-breasted Chat
Icteria virens
| Conservation status | May have increased historically in the East as clearing of forest created more brushy habitat. Current population probably stable, although it has declined in parts of Southwest and elsewhere. |
|---|---|
| Family | Yellow-breasted Chats |
| Habitat | Brushy tangles, briars, stream thickets. Breeds in very dense scrub (such as willow thickets) and briary tangles, often along streams and at the edges of swamps or ponds. Sometimes in dry overgrown pastures, and upland thickets along margins of woods. In winter in the tropics, found in open scrub and woodland edges in the lowlands. |
Photo Gallery
Feeding Behavior
Forages by searching among foliage among dense low tangles or by perching to eat berries. Unlike any other warbler, will hold its food with one foot while it feeds. Forages alone during migration and winter, rather than joining feeding flocks.
Eggs
3-4, up to 6. Eggs large, creamy white, with brown spots at large end. Incubation by female only, 11 days. Commonly parasitized by Brown-headed Cowbirds. Young: Fed by both parents. Leave the nest about 8 days after hatching. Normally 2 broods per year.
Young
Fed by both parents. Leave the nest about 8 days after hatching. Normally 2 broods per year.
Diet
Insects and berries. Feeds on a wide variety of insects, including moths, beetles, bugs, ants, bees, wasps, mayflies, grasshoppers, katydids, caterpillars, and praying mantises; also spiders. Up to half of diet (or more in fall) may be berries and wild fruit, including blackberries, elderberries, wild grapes, and others. Wintering birds in the Northeast often come to bird-feeders, where they will take many unnatural items such as suet or peanut butter.
Nesting
During courtship, male displays to female by pointing bill up and swaying from side to side. In flight song display, male flies up singing, hovers, drops slowly with its wings flapping over its back and legs dangling loosely, then returns to perch. Occasionally nests in loose colonies. Nest: Placed 1-8' above the ground, well concealed in dense shrub or tangled vines. Large open cup nest is constructed by female. Outer base of dead leaves, straw, and weeds provides support for a tightly woven inner nest of vine bark, lined with fine weed stems and grass.
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- All Seasons - Common
- All Seasons - Uncommon
- Breeding - Common
- Breeding - Uncommon
- Winter - Common
- Winter - Uncommon
- Migration - Common
- Migration - Uncommon
Songs and Calls
Series of widely spaced croaks, whistles, and short repeated phrases, very unlike a typical warbler's song. Often sings at night. At times it performs a musical display flight, flopping awkwardly up and down with legs dangling, while singing.How Climate Change Will Reshape the Range of the Yellow-breasted Chat
Audubon’s scientists have used 140 million bird observations and sophisticated climate models to project how climate change will affect this bird’s range in the future.
Zoom in to see how this species’s current range will shift, expand, and contract under increased global temperatures.
Climate threats facing the Yellow-breasted Chat
Choose a temperature scenario below to see which threats will affect this species as warming increases. The same climate change-driven threats that put birds at risk will affect other wildlife and people, too.
Yellow-breasted Chat In the News More News
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Part six of our new series to help you build your birding skills—and love of birds—by learning how to bird by ear.
Birds In The News
New Video Exposes the Yellow-Breasted Chat as a Total Trash Bird
Don’t let the mean old city get you down, buddy.
