I was walking along a productive section of a trail in southern New England when a loud birdsong caught my attention. As is often the case, I didn’t recognize it immediately, but knew it was worth stopping for and investigating. 

Sometimes when that happens, it turns out to be a seldom-used song or call from a familiar bird. Tufted titmice have a wide variety of sounds and they often throw me off. The same goes for catbirds, robins and orioles. But this time, it was indeed something uncommon. 

I used the Merlin app on my phone and it identified it as a yellow-breasted chat. That would be cool, I thought, but let’s get visual confirmation. The Merlin app is a great new tool for birdwatchers, but it’s not 100 percent accurate, and I always like to get visual confirmation. 

The loud, odd calls continued until I noticed a bird fly from one tall shrub to another. As it landed and took a more obvious perch, I noticed the yellow right away and confirmed that it was, indeed, a chat. It was bigger than a warbler, smaller than a cardinal and, upon closer study through binoculars, had all the markings of a chat, including the “spectacles” (white eyerings that extend forward to the bill), bold face pattern and bright yellow chest and belly. 

It continued to sing and amuse me from its new perch. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology describes the sounds as a “cascade of song (to include) streams of whistles, cackles, chuckles, and gurgles with the fluidity of improvisational jazz.” Yeah, that sounds about right.

The yellow-breasted chat was formerly considered a warbler and was part of that family for many years. Differences in song variation, behavior and anatomy led to chats being separated from warblers and given their own family in 2010. 

I hadn’t seen a chat since a Christmas Bird Count in Connecticut about 20 years ago. The range map from Cornell has the chat as a breeding bird throughout the south and northward as far as Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey. The range map does not include any parts of New England. The range map from the American Bird Conservancy includes a swath of New York, but not New England. 

The “sightings map” from Cornell, however, based on eBird reports, shows that people have seen chats throughout New England and well into Canada. I guess you never know what you’ll find or where you’ll find it, and range maps are to be viewed as a guide not as showing set-in-stone boundaries. Besides, as we know from Carolina wrens, red-bellied woodpeckers and many other birds, the geographical range of birds often shifts over time. 

The day with the chat reminded me of an experience I had with a white-eyed vireo a few years ago. Not only did I find the vireo on the same trail, but the circumstances were similar as well. I heard it, didn’t recognize it, had Merlin ID it and then waited patiently for visual confirmation. The white-eyed vireo has a loud, odd song too, described by Cornell as “rapid, harsh, and nasal with sharp chips at beginning and end.” 

White-eyed vireos are also more likely to be seen well south of New England, serving as another example of “you never know.” That odd sound you don’t recognize could be a commoner, like a titmouse, or a less common species, such as a chat or any number of different birds. It’s all part of the wonder of birding in New England.