Icteria virens

Geographic Range

Yellow-breasted chats ( Icteria virens ) have a very broad geographic range. During the breeding season, they extend from southern Canada to Mexico, in southern Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and the United States. In the winter seasons, they range from southern Baja California, to southern Texas, and south to western Panama. In the eastern United States, their range includes northeastern South Dakota, eastern Nebraska, eastern Kansas, and eastern Texas. They are also native to southeastern British Columbia. Yellow-breasted chats migrate from southern Mexico, Central America, and to the Atlantic coast each fall.

• Biogeographic Regions
• nearctic nearctic
  • native native

Habitat

Yellow-breasted chats are found in dense deciduous and coniferous forests. For example, they are found in shrubby and brushy habitats along streams, swamps, forest edges, regenerating burned forests, and upland thickets of recently abandoned farmlands. They live in flowering dogwood , red cedar , and sumac trees. They also occupy fields and fencerows. Gullies, wetlands, and orchards provide shelter and food for this species. They can be found from 250 to 800 m in elevation.

• Habitat Regions
• temperate temperate
• terrestrial terrestrial

• Terrestrial Biomes
• savanna or grassland savanna or grassland
• chaparral chaparral
• forest forest
• rainforest rainforest
• scrub forest scrub forest

• Wetlands
• swamp swamp

Physical Description

Yellow-breasted chats are approximately 18.0 cm in length. Males have a wingspan range of 74 to 81 mm, while females have a wingspan range of 72 to 76 mm. Despite the difference in wingspan, females (22.6 to 30.9 g) weigh more than males (22.2 to 29.5 g). Yellow-breasted chats have a yellow-orange chin and throat. These colors, plus their breast plumage reflect strongly on ultraviolet light. This reflection exhibits curves with two peaks on the ultraviolet and 570 to 590 nm of yellow light of the spectrum. Their faces are grayish with white eye-crescents on the lower eyelids. During the breeding season, males and females have solid black bills, but they can have small, light stripes or dots on either side of their lower mandible toward the base of their bill. As breeding season comes to an end, these stripes widen and begin to take over the solid black bill. Males and females have black foreheads and the facial markings behind their eyes fade to gray and black. As the season passes, the males lose a great amount of facial color. In juvenile chats, their upper bodies are dull grayish or olive brown and they have olive brown wings and tails. Likewise, their chin and throat are dull white with a little splash of yellow. One of the subspecies of yellow-breasted chats, Icteria virens auricollis , has a larger tail, wing span, and bill measurements.

• Other Physical Features
• endothermic endothermic
• homoiothermic
• bilateral symmetry bilateral symmetry

• Sexual Dimorphism
• female larger
• sexes colored or patterned differently
• male more colorful

Reproduction

The mating system of yellow-breasted chats ranges from monogamy, which is the most common, to successive monogamy and occasional polygynandry. Male quality is determined by size, past reproductive success, and song repertoire. Specifically, males with longer wing chords fledge more young. Older males also have a greater tarsus length, which is correlated to song repertoire size. Because male chats spend less time singing after pairing with females, singing likely plays a major role in mate attraction. Singing by males also serves as a territorial defense and attracting additional mates. Singing might function to solicit extra-pair paternity or copulations from neighboring females. Yellow-breasted chats respond belligerently to playback songs of conspecific males and display flights accompanied by songs that occur during territorial disputes; this demonstrates that songs maintain territory boundaries. As a result, males who sang more often and at different pitches defended their mates and territories better than males who didn’t sing at different pitches and sang less often.

• Mating System
• polygynandrous (promiscuous) polygynandrous (promiscuous)

Territory size for breeding yellow-breasted chats and nest success differs among populations. Chats breed in many habitats, but they are commonly found breeding in riparian habitats. In these habitats, they use wild rose as nesting substrate and forage. Nest success is higher in contiguous habitats than in isolated habitats. In a single breeding area, 5 to 8 males breed with 5 to 10 females. Yellow-breasted chats breed once a year around the warmer seasons. Around the last two weeks of May, females begin building round open-nests, which are found 2.5 m above the ground. Nests consist of grasses, leaves, bark, and pine needles. Eggs are laid through July. Males arrive on the breeding grounds days before females, but females build the nest, which consists of carrying the nesting materials. Females lay 3 to 6 eggs per clutch, with an 11-day incubation period. On average, the young reach the fledging stage 9 days after hatching. After the young leave the nest, they remain nearby until they are able to forage for themselves. Once they are independent from their parents, yellow-breasted chats disperse from the nesting area.

• Key Reproductive Features
• iteroparous iteroparous
• seasonal breeding seasonal breeding
• gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate)
• sexual sexual
• oviparous oviparous

Male and female chats feed nestlings at rates that do not vary with brood size. As the nestlings mature, they are fed different prey, starting with insects, then adding berries and a greater amount of prey. Parents bring small or medium-sized prey, about the size of their beaks, back to their nestlings. However, as nestlings age, parents bring prey that is twice the size of their beaks. Males and females both bring similar prey species. While males and females feed the young, females spend more time brooding the nestlings. As the nestlings get older, females decrease the amount of time they spend brooding them. Nesting success is lower in nests where only one adult provides for the nestlings. If both parents care for their young, it improves reproductive success and maintains a monogamous mating bond.

• Parental Investment
• altricial altricial
• male parental care male parental care
• female parental care female parental care
• pre-hatching/birth
  • provisioning
    • male
    • female
  • protecting
    • male
• pre-weaning/fledging
  • provisioning
    • male
    • female
  • protecting
    • male
• pre-independence
  • provisioning
    • male
    • female
  • protecting
    • male

Lifespan/Longevity

The maximum longevity for yellow-breasted chats is 8.9 years in the wild. These birds have not been studied in captivity.

Behavior

Yellow-breasted chats are a diurnal, social species. In the breeding season, their songs are low-pitched with more diverse phrases. They sing at night, and often mimic other bird sounds. Their repertoires range from 41 to 100 song types. Males share their songs, which permits matched counter singing. This means that one male sings a particular song and another male responds with the same song. These songs convey territorial interactions and establish dominance. Yellow-breasted chats sing more during the preparing period than during the incubation and post-fledging period. Males spend more time singing during the post-paring and pre-nesting period than the post-fledging period. In addition, adult chats leave their complete molt near the breeding grounds, while young chats scatter their complete molt.

• Key Behaviors
• arboreal arboreal
• flies
• diurnal diurnal
• motile motile
• migratory migratory
• territorial territorial
• social social

Home Range

Yellow-breasted chats have a summer home range that is larger than their territory. For example, in a Sacramento Valley riparian area, 10 birds were found per 40 ha (100 ac). As for their actual territory, 28 territories averaging 1.3 ha (3.1 ac) were reported in an abandoned Indiana field. Territories averaging 0.12 ha (0.3 ac), and varying from 0.04 to 0.28 ha (0.1 to 0.7 ac) have been reported in an Illinois swamp thicket. Territories varying from 0.5 to 1.0 ha (1.25 to 2.5 ac) have likewise been reported in abandoned fields and fencerows in Virginia.

Communication and Perception

Yellow-breasted chats use songs as their primary source of communication. When males are in the presence of females, they tend to sing to each other. Males sing more often than females during the breeding season. Males are advanced learners as they can mimic many sounds like car alarms, musical melodies, any type of human-made sound, and other bird calls. Outside of breeding season, they are usually a quiet species, which can make them difficult to detect because they rarely sing in the open. “Cheow” is a sound yellow-breasted chats produce when both sexes are protecting their offspring. Their sounds or calls are similar to a whistle, gurgle, chuckle, grunt, cat call, or rattle. Yellow-breasted chats possess a yellow red-orange throat and breast plumage that reflect strongly under ultraviolet light. This reflection exhibits curves with two peaks on the ultraviolet and 570 to 590 nm of yellow light of the spectrum. This represents a type of visual communication.

• Communication Channels
• visual visual
• acoustic acoustic

• Other Communication Modes
• mimicry mimicry
• duets duets
• choruses choruses

• Perception Channels
• visual visual
• ultraviolet
• tactile tactile
• acoustic acoustic
• chemical chemical

Food Habits

Adult yellow-breasted chats feed on small invertebrates , grasshoppers , fruits, and berries. Their offspring are usually fed moth and butterfly larvae. They are proficient at grabbing and eating food with their feet, consuming beetles , weevils , bees , caterpillars , and wasps . They also engulf fruits like strawberries , blueberries , blackberries , and grapes .

• Primary Diet
• carnivore carnivore
  • insectivore insectivore
• herbivore herbivore
  • frugivore frugivore

• Animal Foods
• insects
• terrestrial non-insect arthropods

• Plant Foods
• fruit

Predation

As an open-nested species, nest predation is the major cause of nest failure in yellow-breasted chats. Yellow-breasted chats singing near the nest can attract visual and auditory predators, which prey upon eggs and nestlings. When nests are destroyed by predators, females usually build another one near a neighboring male, or in other cases, they might flee the area and not return. If they don’t return, another female fills the space. Common predators of yellow-breasted chats include western scrub-jays , Virginia opossums , gopher snakes , Argentine ants , dusky-footed woodrats , raccoons , and in rare cases, coyotes .

Ecosystem Roles

A high rate of parasitism comes with large nest patches in yellow-breasted chats. Bronzed cowbirds , black-billed cuckoos , and brown-headed cowbirds are the most common nest parasites. Brown-headed cowbirds watch the nest building activities of yellow-breasted chats in order to lay their eggs with the existing yellow-breasted chat eggs. They tend to lay their eggs around the same nesting cycle or period, but they can lay their eggs during any stage of development as well. Brown-headed cowbird’s eggs look very similar to yellow-breasted chat eggs due to the similar dotted patterns; therefore, they are less likely to boot the cowbird eggs out of their nest. As a result of parasitism, brown-headed cowbirds are the leading cause of nest and fledging failure for yellow-breast chats. Cowbird traps, which are effective, are valuable tools to reduce the failure of host nests.

Economic Importance for Humans: Positive

In a 1980 survey of those who supported non-consumptive wildlife uses (i.e., wildlife watching rather than hunting or fishing), 27.8% of respondents purchased birdseed in the previous year, and 6.4% bought birdfeeders. Across the United States in 1980, more than 25 million people purchased birdseed, spending over $517 million dollars. Over $20 million was spent on birdhouses. Purchases like these support songbirds like yellow-breasted chats, which may visit feeders.

• Positive Impacts
• ecotourism ecotourism

Economic Importance for Humans: Negative

There are no known adverse effects of yellow-breasted chats on humans.

Conservation Status

According to the IUCN Red List, yellow-breasted chats are of “least concern.” This means they are not listed as threatened, vulnerable, or endangered. The population is considered stable and no active conservation programs are in place for this bird.

Additional Links

Encyclopedia of Life

BioKIDS Critter Catalog

Contributors

Darius Brown (author), Radford University, Karen Powers (editor), Radford University, Leila Siciliano Martina (editor), Texas State University.

References

BirdLife International, 2012. " Icteria virens " (On-line). IUCN 2013. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2013.2. Accessed April 04, 2014 at http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/22722057/0 .

Bleitz, D. 1959. Yellow-breasted chat parasitized by tick. The Wilson Bulletin , 71/1: 95.

Brewer, R. 1955. Size of home range in eight bird species in a southern Illinois swamp-thicket. The Wilson Bulletin , 67/2: 140-141.

Burhans, D., F. Thompson. 1999. Habitat patch size and nesting success of yellow-breasted chats. The Wilson Bulletin , 111/2: 210-215.

Cooper, S., G. Ritchison. 2005. Nestling provisioning by male and female yellow-breasted chats: No relationships between morphology and parental care/ (machos y hembras de Icteria virens como proveedores: No hay relacion entre la morfologia y el cuidado parental). Journal of Field Ornithology , 76/3: 298-302.

Dennis, J. 1967. Fall departure of the yellow-breasted chat ( Icteria virens ) in eastern North America. Bird-Banding , 38/2: 130-135.

Dennis, J. 1958. Some aspects of the breeding ecology of the yellow-breasted chat ( Icteria virens ). Bird-Banding , 29/3: 169-183.

Dulisse, J., S. Ogle, M. Machmer. 2005. First nest record for yellow-breasted chat ( Icteria virens auricollis ) in southeastern British Columbia. Northwestern Naturalist , 86/3: 160-162.

Dussourd, N., G. Ritchison. 2003. Singing behavior of male yellow-breasted chats: Repertoires, rates, reproductive success, and a comparison with other wood-warblers. The Wilson Bulletin , 115/1: 52-57.

Eckerle, K., C. Thompson. 2001. Yellow-breasted chat. The Birds of North America Online , 575: N/A. Accessed February 07, 2014 at http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/575/articles/introduction .

Ficken, M., R. Ficken. 1962. Some aberrant characters of the yellow-breasted chat, Icteria virens . The Auk , 79/4: 718-719.

Gaines, D. 1974. A new look at the nesting riparian avifauna of the Sacramento Valley, California. West Birds , 61-80: 5.

Kathleen, K. 1983. Longevity records of North American birds: Remizidae through Parulidae . Journal of Field Ornithology , 54: 287-294.

Lowther, P. 1979. Nest selection by brown-headed cowbirds. The Wilson Bulletin , 91/1: 118-122.

Mangun, W., W. Shaw. 1984. Alternative mechanisms for funding nongame wildlife conservation. Public Administration Review , 44/5: 407-413.

Mays, H., K. McGraw, G. Ritchison, S. Cooper, V. Rush, R. Parker. 2004. Sexual dichromatism in the yellow-breasted chat Icteria virens : Spectrophotometric analysis and biochemical basis. Journal of Avian Biology , 35/2: 125-134.

McKibbin, R., C. Bishop. 2010. Habitat characterization of breeding territories of the western yellow-breasted chat in the South Okanagan, British Columbia, Canada. Northwestern Naturalist , 91/2: 145-156.

Mino, C., I. Pollet, C. Bishop, M. Russello. 2011. Genetic mating system and population history of the endangered western yellow-breasted chat ( Icteria virens auricollis ) in British Columbia, Canada. Canadian Journal of Zoology , 89/10: 881-892.

Morgan, T., C. Bishop, T. Williams. 2007. Yellow-breasted chat and gray catbird productivity in a fragmented western riparian system. The Wilson Journal of Ornithology , 119/3: 494-498.

Morrison, M., A. Averill-Murray. 2002. Evaluating the efficacy of manipulating cowbird parasitism on host nesting success. The Southwestern Naturalist , 47/2: 236-243.

Peterson, B., B. Kus, D. Deutschman. 2004. Determining nest predators of the least Bell's vireo through point counts, tracking stations, and video photography / determinación de los depredadores de los nidos de vireo bellii pusillus attravés de conteos de punto, estaciones de muestreo y videos. Journal of Field Ornithology , 75/1: 89-95.

Ritchison, G. 1988. Responses of yellow-breasted chats to the songs of neighboring and non-neighboring conspecifics (respuesta de lcteria virens al canto de conespecificos vecinales y no-vecinales). Journal of Field Ornithology , 59/1: 37-42.

Terres, J. 1980. The Audubon Society Encyclopedia of North American Birds . New York: Knopf.

Thompson, C., V. Nolan. 1973. Population biology of the yellow-breasted chat ( Icteria virens L.) in southern Indiana. Ecological Monographs , 43/2: 145-171.