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Yellow-breasted Chat
Icteria auricollis (Western subspecies)
45.25, -108.501
Field Notes
Description:
Another more often heard than seen featherd friend. Our largest wood warbler is a unique genus of one. Fairly large like a Mockingbird. Adult male has a thick back bill and long tail, sporting white spectacles and a thin submustacial stripe; Olive head along with the wings and a succulent Yellow from bill to near the stearn where it gets a bit white and pinkish.
Habitat:
Sulky, Secretive but if you know where to find them they seem to work in a colony of sorts protective of the nest and the live-in mate... yet spend lots of time telling every Chat around where they live...and this is when you can see them ~ as they come up from dense under growth to make the announcement.
Notes:
They are mimics as well ~ they have an extensive repertorie of unmusical sounds - a cacophony of sorts but often a nasally pitch like the Gray Catbird and the two often in the West live and breed side by side.
So at one point in the photo taking i realized the Catbird and the Chat were actually mimiking one another along the fast and furiously rising Yellowstone River.
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