On June 18, 1812, the United States declared war on England mostly to stay in contention with European powers still making claims on land in North America. The disruption in North American trade caused John James Audubon to reconsider investing in a trade business in New Orleans with his brother-in-law, Thomas Bakewell. Audubon decided instead to invest in another trade business with his close friend, Dr. Adam Rankin, in Henderson, Kentucky. In the fall of 1813, Audubon crossed the Kentucky barrens (see Plate 14) to get to Louisville to purchase goods and items to take back to Henderson. While much of the ground would have been grassy, stoney, and bare, other parts would have been “impenetrable patches of briars, sumach [sic], prickly ash, and different species of smilax.”
Out of the briars would have been Rosa rubiginosa within which Audubon placed the nest of the Yellow-breasted chat for Birds of America. Also in the drawing, Audubon tried to capture the male attempting to attract the attention of the female by “performing the strangest and most whimsical gesticulations.” When Alexander Wilson (1766-1813) classified this “very singular bird” in American Ornithology, he related the Yellow-breasted Chat most closely to a Black-capped chickadee. In the revised edition of American Ornithology, Charles Bonaparte concluded that the Yellow-breasted chat allied more closely with blackbirds and orioles. Audubon placed the Yellow-breasted chat between the vireos and the waxwings in Birds of America. For now, this singular bird has been placed at the end of the warblers and just before the tanagers.