Yellow-Breasted Chat (Icteria virens)

County List:

Rule:

Mixed Forested/Nonforested or Nonforested Landscapes

1st alternative:
      (Oak (Regen or Sap))
      or (Assorted Hardwoods (Regen or Sap))
   containing:
      Mast
   adjacent to:
      (Edge or Riparian)

2nd alternative:
      Upland Brush
     or Lowland Brush
   containing:
      Mast

Habitat List:

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Literature:

Habitat: The Yellow-breasted Chat favors open areas with thick brush. Emergent trees are used as song perches, but there can be no closed canopy. In southern Michigan, the species often occurs in dry brushy areas, typically with such trees as hawthorn and red cedar. The species is also found in various wet shrubby areas, including streamside brush. Although habitats such as these continue to be found as one moves north in the state, the chat becomes very rare. North of the southern three tiers of counties, at least two of the small number of Atlas sightings have been in cutover areas with saplings 2 to 4 m high.

In presettlement times, when the early successional habitats that the species now favors were sparingly present, the species may have been mainly restricted to wet areas. Pough (1946) suggested that at these times it was "probably found chiefly in streamsides and swamp borders."

Habitat: Breeding: Brushy pastures, thickets or briar patches, usually near water. Clearings with young growth resulting from logging or burning. Avoids high elevations. Wintering: Dense thickets.

Special Habitat Requirements: Dense shrubs and vines with scattered young trees, often near water.

Habitat: Brushy tangles, briers, stream thickets. Breeds in very dense scrub (such as willow thickets) and briery tangles, often along streams and at the edges of swamps or ponds. Sometimes in dry overgrown pastures and in upland thickets along margins of woods.

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 wilds fruit, including blackberries, elderberries, wild grapes, and others. Wintering birds in the northeast often come to bird feeders, where they will take many items such as suet or peanut butter.

Nest: Occasionally nests in loose colonies. Nest placed 1-8 feet 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. Commonly parasitized by cowbirds.