The chat's coming in the spring is like the arrival of a brass band. Male chats are loud, continuous singers, sometimes heard through the night.

Chats inhabit lowland tangles and thickets along rivers and floodplains. It is the largest of North American warblers.

In western Oregon, the chat is an uncommon to common summer resident of the interior Rogue Valley. It is a locally uncommon summer resident in the interior Umpqua Valley. In the Willamette Valley it is a locally rare to uncommon summer resident, and rare east to Oakridge. In eastern Oregon, the chat is a rare spring migrant in Klamath Basin and a locally uncommon summer resident in valley riparian areas of Harney and Malheur counties, the Deschutes and John Day River systems.

The Yellow-breasted chat is an Oregon Conservation Strategy Species in the Klamath Mountains and Willamette Valley ecoregions.

Hear the song of the Yellow-breasted chat

Photo by Kelly Colgan-Azar