SCOTT SHALAWAY A study in bizarre mating behaviors

Early one May morning a few years ago a bleary-eyed Emma stumbled into the bedroom and announced, "I can't sleep. Some bird is yelling right outside my window." It was 4 a.m.
I stumbled over to Emma's room. She was right. A bird was raising a ruckus in the silver maple less than 15 feet from Emma's bed. But it wasn't yelling; it was singing. Its song, however, is one of the less musical ones in the spring chorus.
Yellow-breasted chats sing an odd assortment of sounds -- chips, honks, hoots, buzzes, rattles. And like mockingbirds, chats often sing at night.
Though there is usually a pair of chats within earshot of the house, some years I can pick out as many as three different singing males. And when I walk through nearby suitable habitat -- dense thickets along forests edges -- chats seem to be everywhere.
Chats are the largest warblers in North America, and they occur across most of the U.S. While most warblers are petite and dainty, chats are stocky, long-tailed, yellow-breasted birds about seven inches long. Their backs are olive green, they wear white spectacles and have a black patch between the bill and eye.
Distinctive behavior
Their behavior is even more distinctive. The harsh unmusical voice is loud and might be confused only with a mockingbird, brown thrasher, or catbird. But listen for a few minutes. The chat repeats the same bizarre notes over and over. Mimid repertoires vary much more.
Chats also sing on the wing. Though they usually sing from hidden perches in dense vegetation and are difficult to see, occasionally, no doubt in an effort to be seen by females and other males, chats flutter awkwardly from one tree to another while spewing forth a telltale cacophony.
In these display flights, their legs dangle limply, and their wing beats seem reduced to slow motion. Sometimes it seems they might fall from the sky as they sing and fly simultaneously. If I find it so noticeable, I'm sure other chats do, too, and that's what matters most.
Like most song birds, chats are monogamous. The male defends the breeding territory, while the female builds a fairly large open cup nest in dense vegetation. I have found chat nests in blackberry thickets and tangles of multiflora rose. The nest is usually less than six feet above the ground.
Chats also nest in dense vegetation on the edges of streams, ponds, and swamps.
Both parents feed
Four or five eggs are typical, and, the female alone incubates them for just 11 days. The creamy white eggs are speckled with small brown or purplish spots. Often these markings are concentrated at the larger end of the egg. Two clutches per year are typical.
Upon hatching, both parents feed the chat chicks. Nestlings grow rapidly and leave the nest when just eight days old.
Though they can't yet fly, they are safer from predators among the branches of dense shrubs than they are if they remain in the nest. This is why many song birds fledge before they can fly.
(Those baby birds you find hopping around the backyard didn't fall from a nest. They fell from a tree or shrub. Place them back in the safety of woody vegetation, and their parents will resume feeding them in response to their begging calls.)
Chat menu
During the spring and early summer, chats eat all kinds of invertebrates -- beetles, ants, bees, wasps, grasshoppers, caterpillars, true bugs, butterflies and spiders. As fruits and berries ripen, they become increasingly important menu items. Blackberries, elderberries, grapes, and mulberries are among the chat's favorite foods.
Just as a chat's voice is oddly different from other warblers, so is its feeding behavior. Chats hold food in one foot while eating. Most warblers simply snag bits of food and swallow them immediately. Chats eat their food in bites, like chickadees and titmice.
In September, chats head south to the tropics for the winter. When they return in early May, you'll hear their distinctive hoots and honks -- though it may be in the middle of the night.
sshalaway@aol.com