Bird Biographies :: THE CATBIRD Mockingbird Family MimidAE

THE CATBIRD Mockingbird Family MimidAE

Length: Nearly 9 inches.
Male and Female: A slender, long-tailed, gray bird, with a black crown and tail, and chestnut-brown feathers under the tail; breast somewhat paler than back; bill slightly curved.
Note: A soft wa, not unlike the mew of a kitten.
Song: A delightful warble—soft, sweet, and musical, though it is occasionally interspersed with the catlike noise wa, and with sounds of mimicry. Catbirds are sometimes called northern mockingbirds.
Habitat: Tangled thickets preferred. Fruit trees, berry-patches, and garden-shrubbery are also sought.
Nest: A veritable scrap-basket made of twigs, leaves, grasses, plant-fibers and rootlets, with paper sometimes interwoven. One nest that I examined contained a scrap from a torn letter and a fragment of a sermon from a newspaper. Several tell-tale cherry-stones lay on the bottom, circumstantial evidence of theft.
Eggs: A lovely greenish-blue, not unlike those of the robin.
Range: A common bird of eastern North America, from central Canada to the Gulf and northern Florida. It is found in the northwestern part of the U. S. and winters in our southern states and in Central America.

The catbird is well-named. It is the color of a Maltese cat, is sleek and agile, and in movement quiet and stealthy. Its mew is so like that of a kitten as to be confusing to the uninitiated. I recall the frantic barking of our small dog at a catbird that she heard in the shrubbery one day. It was difficult to convince her that one of her hated foes, a cat, was not the author of the sound that always infuriated her.

CATBIRD

Though catbirds possess little claim to beauty, they seem to be vain and appear always to be doing something to attract attention. They are in constant motion—twitching their tails, jerking their bodies, and making their gentle, inane “cat-calls.”

I once had an amusing experience with a catbird. I had seated myself near a thicket in which a Maryland Yellow-throat was flitting. Hoping to beguile him from the shrubbery and thus afford myself a better view of him, I gave his song repeatedly—“Witch-a-tee-o, witch-a-tee-o.” A catbird on the fence-rail behind the thicket was flirting his tail, looking knowingly at me, and giving his call repeatedly. I paid no attention to him, and continued to say “Witch-a-tee-o.” It was not long before he, too, warbled “Witch-a-tee-o.” Whether he did it from his love of mimicry or from a desire to be noticed, I shall never know, but his bearing was, “Now will you pay some attention to me!”

Catbirds are in disfavor among the growers of cherries and berries, both wild and cultivated; they make havoc in strawberry-beds. Mr. Forbush reports that their depredations vary in different localities. He claims that in spite of their fruit-stealing propensities they deserve protection in Massachusetts, because they devour locusts, cankerworms, and the caterpillars of various moths, most important being those of the gypsy and brown-tail moths.

In the Biological Survey Bulletin “Fifty Common Birds of Farm and Orchard” (No. 513) the following statements about the catbird are made: “Half of its food consists of fruit, and the cultivated crops most often injured are cherries, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries. Beetles, ants, crickets, and grasshoppers are the most important element of its animal food. The bird is known to attack a few pests such as cutworms, leaf beetles, clover-root curculio, and the periodical cicada, but the good it does in this way probably does not pay for the fruit it steals. The extent to which it should be protected may perhaps be left to the individual cultivator; that is, it should be made lawful to destroy catbirds that are doing manifest damage to crops.”

Dr. Judd found that catbirds fed their young almost entirely on insects; he therefore scored a point in their favor. Their bravery in defense of their nest and their young is well known.

Burroughs tells an unusual anecdote about a catbird as follows:

“A friend of mine who had a summer home on one of the trout-streams of the Catskills discovered that the catbird was fond of butter, and she soon had one of the birds coming every day to the dining-room, perching on the back of the chair, and receiving its morsel of butter from a fork held in the mistress’s hand. I think the butter was unsalted. My friend was convinced after three years that the same pair of birds returned to her each year because each season the male came promptly for his butter.”[115]

Many other incidents might be related concerning this interesting bird,—of its unusual intelligence and its remarkable power of mimicry. One catbird in Tennessee learned to imitate the songs of all the birds that nested near him. His rendering of the red-eyed vireo’s song was as good as that of the vireo himself. His listeners felt that it was wearisome enough to have the red-eye preaching constantly, but to have the catbird reiterating it was more than they could endure.

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