Hanging chat
A yellow-breasted chat scopes out the scene from a branch in a willow tree on a hazy morning. Chats are more often heard than seen, with a mix of sounds the Cornell Lab of Ornithology describes as “whistles, cackles, chuckles, and gurgles with the fluidity of improvisational jazz.”- These calls are made primarily during the breeding season. When seen chats are often deep in the underbrush or very briefly in the upper branches of trees and shrubs.
Yellow-breasted chats spend the winter in central America, then head north to northern Mexico and the U.S. to breed during the summer, preferring shrubby areas and forest edges. Agricultural abandonment and subsequent re-forestation in the eastern U.S. has led to a decline in chat populations, while populations in the western U.S. have increased.
Hanging chat
A yellow-breasted chat scopes out the scene from a branch in a willow tree on a hazy morning. Chats are more often heard than seen, with a mix of sounds the Cornell Lab of Ornithology describes as “whistles, cackles, chuckles, and gurgles with the fluidity of improvisational jazz.”- These calls are made primarily during the breeding season. When seen chats are often deep in the underbrush or very briefly in the upper branches of trees and shrubs.
Yellow-breasted chats spend the winter in central America, then head north to northern Mexico and the U.S. to breed during the summer, preferring shrubby areas and forest edges. Agricultural abandonment and subsequent re-forestation in the eastern U.S. has led to a decline in chat populations, while populations in the western U.S. have increased.