The catbird[15] (fig. 6), like the thrasher, is a lover of swamps and delights to make its home in a tangle of wild grapevines, greenbriers, and shrubs, where it is safe from attack and can find its favorite food in abundance. It is found throughout the United States west to the Rocky Mountains, and extends also from Washington, Idaho, and Utah northward into the provinces of Canada. It winters in the Southern States, Cuba, Mexico, and Central America.

Reports from the Mississippi Valley indicate that the catbird is sometimes a serious annoyance to fruit growers. The reason for such reports may possibly be found in the fact that on the prairies fruit-bearing shrubs, which afford so large a part of this bird’s food, are conspicuously absent. With the settlement of this region comes an extensive planting of orchards, vineyards, and small-fruit gardens, which furnish shelter and nesting sites for the catbird as well as for other species. There is in consequence a large increase in the numbers of the birds, but no corresponding gain in the supply of native fruits upon which they were accustomed to feed. Under these circumstances what is more natural than for the birds to turn to cultivated fruits for their food? The remedy is obvious: Cultivated fruits can be protected by the simple expedient of planting the wild species which are preferred by the birds. Some experiments with catbirds in captivity show that the Russian mulberry is preferred to any cultivated fruit.

The stomachs of 645 catbirds were examined and found to contain 44 per cent of animal (insect) and 58 per cent of vegetable food. Ants, beetles, caterpillars, and grasshoppers constitute three-fourths of the animal food, the remainder being made up of bugs, miscellaneous insects, and spiders. One-third of the vegetable food consists of cultivated fruits, or those which may be cultivated, as strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries; but while we debit the bird with the whole of this, it is probable—and in the eastern and well-wooded part of the country almost certain—that a large part is obtained from wild vines. The rest of the vegetable matter is mostly wild fruit, as cherries, dogwood, sour gum, elderberries, greenbrier, spiceberries, black alder, sumac, and poison ivy. Although the catbird sometimes does considerable harm by destroying small fruit, it can not on the whole be considered injurious. On the contrary, in most parts of the country it does far more good than harm.