| The Yellow-breasted Chat is olive-green above with bright yellow on the breast and white on the abdomen. There is a black mask on the face with white bordering above and below giving the appearance that this bird is wearing "spectacles". The Chat is atypically large for a woodland warbler and unlike most warblers, the black bill is thick and the olive tale is rather long.
The Chat breeds in brushy tangles and thorny thickets, along streams and shrubby hillsides throughout the United States except for some of the most northern regions such as Maine and North Dakota arriving mostly in May. Their numbers have decreased in the last few decades in the eastern part of the United States as successional growth has returned to woodlands, but the numbers have increased in the west and the overall decline is negligible. Like most warblers the Yellow-breasted Chat winters in the tropics and migrates south to Mexico down to Panama from August to September.
The bird is somewhat shy and can be difficult to locate by sight and even more difficult to be found by sound. It will move furtively among the thickets and throws its voice like a ventriloquist. The sounds are an amazing assortment of croaks, chuckles, wheezes, whistles, caws and sometimes car horns. Sometimes called the "Yellow Mockingbird" it often mimics other birds and frequently sings at night. The frequency of singing declines after courtship or about mid-June.
During courtship the male continues its clownish behavior. It hovers somewhat like a Mockingbird slowly flapping its wings and dangling its feet while singing and flopping awkwardly up and down fluttering back to its perch.
The clutch consists of 4 to 5 white eggs, speckled with brown and lilac spots and laid in a large bulky nest. The nest is constructed of bark, grass, straw, and leaves, and lined with fine grasses usually well concealed in the dense vegetation 2 to 8 feet above the ground. The female incubates the eggs for about 11 days and young which leave the nest about 8 to 11 days after hatching are cared for by both parents. Like many birds that prefer the open woodlands they are often parasitized by the Brown-headed Cowbird. They will sometimes nest in loose colonies even though the males tend to be somewhat territorial.
The diet consists of insects and berries. The best foods to attract them to your back yard is apples and bananas.
Length: 6 1/2 to 7 1/2 inches
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