On this bright, cool morning, we opted for a hike through the South Platte Valley, looping past several lakes that border the river channel. In one area, the trail crosses a brushy ridge with scattered groves of cottonwoods and it was there that I heard the unmistakable "song" of a yellow breasted chat, more like a loud, rambling conversation. Indeed, though classified as a warbler (our largest), the chat acts more like a thrasher or a catbird, skulking in the shrubbery and delivering its litany of seemingly unrelated calls and noises.
Solitary for most of the year, yellow breasted chats summer across the Lower 48, preferring riparian woods and brushy hillsides. Nests are placed in low shrubs and these common birds would probably go unnoticed were it not for the male's tendency to sing from an exposed perch, his bright yellow chest and abdomen glowing in the early summer sun. Here in Colorado, chats are especially common along streams of the lower foothills where they feast on insects and berries. While some winter along the East Coast of the U.S., most yellow breasted chats head to Mexico or Central America for the colder months.
This morning, our songster was accompanied by house wrens, lesser goldfinches, yellow warblers, song sparrows, black-billed magpies, broad-tailed hummingbirds, a Say's phoebe, northern flickers and those ubiquitous robins and house finches. Double-crested cormorants moved among the lakes, fishing for their breakfast, while great blue herons, a black-crowned night heron, flocks of Canada geese and squadrons of ducks passed overhead. But it was the chat that made our morning, delivering his strident lecture to all who cared to listen.
