Photo: Gray Catbird, Kathy Sidles/Audubon Photography Awards
Connie Ericson
One of my favorite sights (and sounds) of spring is my first Gray Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis) of the season. I’ve always found them elegant-looking, with a sleek, slaty body, jaunty black cap and rusty patch under the tail.
They would be endearing even if their only call was their distinctive “mew,” but they are excellent singers and mimics. They are in the same family as mockingbirds and thrashers, all in the family Mimidae. To advertise territory a male will sing phrases that Cornell's All About Birds says include “whistles, squeaks, gurgles, whines, and nasal tones,” which sometimes imitate other birds or even “frogs and mechanical sounds.” Catbirds do not repeat the phrases, unlike mockingbirds, which will repeat them three or more times, and thrashers, which will repeat a phrase once before changing. Thrashers appear to distinguish songs of catbirds from those of other thrashers by the number of repeated syllables in a sequence rather than a specific pattern. (David Sibley, The Sibley Guide to Bird Life & Behavior, p. 69) Female catbirds also sing, but less frequently and more quietly.
As the name of its genus (Dumetella or thicket) suggests, you can attract catbirds to your yard with dense plantings of shrubs and fruit-bearing native plants. As the native shrubs and flowers I have planted on the terracing in my back yard have grown up, I have seen catbirds more often. I see them flitting from the Red Oak and Eastern Dogwood trees to the chokeberry and winterberry. Like the Northern Flickers that visit my yard, the catbirds also will forage along the face of the stacked-stone walls for ants and other burrowing insects. They are somewhat shy about approaching the birdbath, but then bathe enthusiastically.
Gray Catbird bathing. Photo: Darla J. Oathout/Audubon Photography Awards
Although both male and female catbirds may carry nesting material at first to starter nests, the female alone reportedly builds the final nest over a period of five to eight days. The nest often will be in low dense growth at the edges of woods. (Donald Stokes, Bird Behavior, vol. I, p. 207) Although I live very close to Arlington’s Glencarlyn Park, I have never seen a catbird nest in my yard. I have mixed feelings about whether having a nest there would be a good thing, because I have seen several neighborhood cats pass through regularly.
Catbirds, unlike other species in the family Mimidae, migrate from their breeding grounds and winter mostly in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, although some winter in the southeastern United States, which allowed me to enjoy them during winter when I lived in Houston. (Sibley, page 474)
Black Catbird. Photo: Lawrence Hollar/Audubon Photography Awards
On a birdwatching trip to the Yucatán Peninsula, I also was charmed by the Black Catbird (Melanoptila glabrirostris). It is a member of the family Mimidae, but it does not mimic other birds’ songs. It’s slightly smaller than the Gray Catbird but similar in shape with a long tail and thin bill. It’s “black,” but in light it shows glossy purple and blue-green plumage. It shares a fondness for thickets, scrub, dense forest understory and edge habitat. It was one of my favorite birds of the trip. Visit Cornell’s Birds of the World to learn more about them.