Yellow-breasted Chat

The yellow-breasted chat (Icteria virens) is a large songbird in the New World blackbirds family Icteridae that is found in North and Central America. It has sometimes been placed in its own family Icteriidae and in the New World warbler family Parulidae. == Taxonomy == The yellow-breasted chat was formally described in 1758 by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. He placed it with the thrushes in the genus Turdus, coined the binomial name Turdus virens, and specified the type locality as "America". The specific epithet is Latin meaning 'green'. The locality has been restricted to South Carolina. Linnaeus based his account on the "yellow brested chat" that had been described and illustrated by the English naturalist Mark Catesby in his book The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands. It is now the only species placed in the genus Icteria that was introduced in 1808 by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot. It is also the only species placed in the family Icteriidae that was introduced (as Icterieae) in 1858 by the American naturalist Spencer Baird. The yellow-breasted chat was formerly considered the largest member of the family Parulidae, but following…