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Yellow-breasted chat (Icteria virens)
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Yellow-breasted chat (Icteria virens) (credit: Ron Austing — Bruce Coleman Inc.)
Any of several species of songbird named for their harsh, chattering notes. True chats (chat-thrushes) make up a major division of the thrush family (Turdidae). Australian chats (usually placed in the family Maluridae), which inhabit scrubby open lands, are about 5 in. (13 cm) long. The yellow-breasted chat (Icteria virens, family Parulidae) of North America is the largest wood warbler (7.5 in., or 19 cm, long). Greenish gray above and bright yellow below, with white "spectacles," it hides in thickets but may perch in the open to utter its mewing, churring, and whistling sounds. See also redstart.

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Chats

Whinchat (Saxicola rubetra)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Muscicapidae
Subfamily: Saxicolinae
Genera

About 30, see text.

Chats (formerly sometimes known as Chat-thrushes) are a group of small Old World insectivorous birds formerly classed as members of the thrush family Turdidae, but now considered Old World flycatchers.

This name is normally applied to the robust ground-feeding species found in Europe and Asia; these make up most of the subfamily Saxicolinae. The Australian Chats, in the genera Epthianura and Ashbyia of the Meliphagidae family, are not closely related.

There are a large number of genera.

Most northern species are strong migrants.

The Yellow-breasted Chat, a new-world species of unresolved taxonomy, originally thought to be in the Parulidae family, is unrelated.

Species in taxonomic order

Saxicolinae genera not usually called "chats" are:

Aberrant redstarts, possibly belonging in this subfamily:


 
 

 

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Chat (bird)" Read more