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As I write, a gray catbird has been singing in my yard all morning, as it has most mornings for the past few weeks. Since my eyesight is not great, and since catbirds like to sing in the seclusion of high, leafy tree branches, I have only caught sight of the bird a few times. It’s a slender bird a bit smaller than a robin, and is a medium gray all over except for its dark gray cap and a rusty patch on its rump below its tail.
Although I would love to see it more often, I hear it sing every day. Here’s a recording:
Sorry about the cars—I live on a busy street. I’ve read, though, that birds sing louder in a setting with a lot of ambient noise. This catbird knows how to do it!
How do I know it’s a catbird?? I’ve discovered a wonderful app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology: the Merlin Bird ID. With it installed on my phone, I can activate its recorder when I hear birdsong, and the app will identify the bird its sophisticated computer program thinks is singing. Birds frequently identified for me include—no surprise—the house sparrow, the American robin and the European starling.
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But I was surprised and charmed to learn that some birds I didn’t know were in my garden have been singing here regularly: the tufted titmouse, the Carolina wren and the chimney swift among them. Once or twice the app has identified a cedar waxwing, a brown-headed cowbird, an American goldfinch, a blue jay and a northern cardinal, birds I know are present in the Hudson Valley. But the bird that has most won my heart is the gray catbird, whose song I have learned to recognize.
It brings me joy every time I hear it, partly because its liquid, musical sound is so beautiful and leisurely, and partly because it means my attempt to make my garden a haven for birds is succeeding.
Sometimes I’m reminded of a humorous short story by James Thurber. “The Catbird Seat” is about a man tormented by a co-worker who peppers him with metaphorical questions. One especially nettles him: “Are you sitting in the catbird seat?” The saying, explains his assistant, was popularized by Red Barber, the Dodgers baseball team’s announcer. “Sitting in the catbird seat” means “sitting pretty, like a batter with three balls and no strikes on him.”
Although various species of catbirds, named for their calls that sound like a cat’s meow, exist around the world, the baseball metaphor almost certainly refers to the gray catbird (Dumetella carolinensis), the only catbird native to North America. Like many birds, it will perch on a high tree branch to sing its extended, melodic song. I’ve only heard its alarm call, the catlike mew, a few times. Perhaps it feels relatively comfortable and unthreatened in my yard, despite the actual cat that wanders through from time to time.
Catbirds typically nest in thick, leafy cover in a shrub or tree, about four feet above the ground. We have a lot of that in our yard, and the native pollinator garden I’m planning for one corner will add more.
Catbirds like to eat berries. In addition to the black chokeberry bush (Aronia melanocarpa) that bears an enormous crop which lasts through the winter, we have a young cherry tree. Usually, a fungus attacks the fruit as it ripens, but the tree bore so many cherries this year that they seemed to have mostly outpaced the fungus. The cherries were just turning red, and I had nibbled on a few that were not quite ripe but still tasty, when I came into the garden one morning to find every single fruit had disappeared. Robins and a number of other birds like cherries, but the catbird undoubtedly ate its share. Someday I would love to enjoy a whole bowl of ripe cherries from my tree, but I’d rather the birds got them than the fungus.
Catbirds also like to eat caterpillars and feed them to their nestlings. Reluctantly, I try to leave caterpillars alone when I notice them eating holes in my plants. An especially large outbreak of the invasive and often highly destructive spongy moth (Lymantria dispar dispar, once called the gypsy moth) has been a problem in the Hudson Valley during the last couple of years. Earlier this spring, I found spongy moth caterpillars on my apple trees, though they never attacked in enough numbers to threaten the trees’ health. Spongy moth caterpillars are hairy, and many birds don’t like to eat them, but I discovered a robin feeding one to its chicks, and I have read that gray catbirds are especially likely to eat spongy moth caterpillars.
Tolerating caterpillars is a great way to attract birds during nesting season—better than a birdfeeder, because most birds prefer feeding caterpillars to their young rather than seeds. The side benefit is assuring a robust bird population to keep caterpillar populations in check. Using pesticides on caterpillars can kill birds, setting the stage for a worse infestation the next year when fewer birds are around.
I’ll keep encouraging that catbird, because I love its beautiful song. There may be a nesting pair in my yard—it’s the males who do most of the singing. By this time of year, I might even be listening to one of this year’s young catbirds singing its heart out to attract a mate.