Catbirds

[pameladean]

So it's finally spring, and for the last several weeks robins, house finches, bluejays, and cardinals have been singing and calling. The chickadees are weirdly silent and I'm a bit worried about them, but we did hear demands for "cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger" earlier in the year.

The robins have been very actively singing. For the last week or so, I've heard one that didn't sound like the others. I began to wonder. Eventually, while still related to a robin's song, it just went completely over the top like a highly operatic rendition of a simple folk song. A day or so after that, I heard in the gloaming the high thin cry of, no, not a Siamese cat, but a gray catbird.

This morning at dawn I was awakened by Saffron's abrupt exit from under the quilt, or else by a very loud buzzy trilly song with melodious intervals that went on, with variations and possibly from at least two different sources, for at least an hour. The catbirds had finished their training and were prepared to perform concerts. They have been doing this intermittently all day. There was a brief period in which cardinals, like hawkers at the intermission of an Elizabethan play, cried, "What cheer?" for a while. But then the catbirds began again.

They seemed to be right on my bedroom windowsill, and the cats absolutely thought so too. Invisibility not being a known trait of catbirds, though they are skilled at yelling at you from dense shrubbery, I stared out the window until I saw movement in the ash tree across our neighbor to the north's back yard, and then got out the binoculars. Yes! Catbird!

We have had a single catbird before, and I always welcome it. I wonder how many there are this year.

Here are some images of a gray catbird, though the ones we get here seldom have a red patch under their tails:

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Gray_Catbird/id

And here are some sound files:

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Gray_Catbird/sounds

The first file, of the catbird song, is not unlike our catbirds, though ours have more robin in them at the moment. For the cat cry, the call recorded in New York is most like ours. I was startled by some of the others, which were less Siamese and more pure meow.

I was going to add a robin's song for comparison, but none of the ones I could find was as melodious and meditative as the ones we have in my neighborhood.

Pamela

Comments

[kore]

The catbirds had finished their training and were prepared to perform concerts. They have been doing this intermittently all day. There was a brief period in which cardinals, like hawkers at the intermission of an Elizabethan play, cried, "What cheer?" for a while. But then the catbirds began again.

This is just lovely.

I think we have -- sparrows, chickadees (dee - dee -dee, one of the first bird calls I learned to recognize in NM), starlings, robins, seagulls, crows, pigeons, and a little guy on our old iron fire escape with a peach-pink head -- no idea what he was.

[pameladean]

I think watching the Globe Theater's free plays has affected my similes.

I love chickadees, so bold. I should get some thistle seed for them.

I'm also guiltily fond of starlings. It's not their fault that some Shakespeare idolator with more hair than wit decided to import them. And their stars are so lovely. I also like their pennywhistle call.

Your peach-head guy might be a house finch or a purple finch, although I'm not sure that's quite the right color; I think of house finches as having raspberry heads. I'm not that great at western birds. I do have the Western Sibley around somewhere.

P.

[kore]

A finch! Maybe that is it. Suppoesdly there were flocks of wild parrots in Ballard, altho we never saw any when we were there. https://parkways.seattle.gov/2014/03/25/peru-natives-make-annual-trip-to-seward-park/

I totally love starlings. I love how they imitate sounds and their swizzle-stick goofy call and their pretty pretty feathers. T swears there's one in our neighbourhood that does car alarms.

[pameladean]

Wow, that is a fancy bird!

The fanciness of starlings is different but no less pleasing."Swizzle-stick goofy call" is perfect.

I'm sure T is right. Starlings are good mimics. I live in hope of one's crying "Mortimer!" at me, but so far my hope has not been rewarded.

P.

[asakiyume]

I love how cheerfully they'll attempt to imitate other birds! They aren't as accomplished as mockingbirds, but they don't let that stand in the way of a good concert!

My biggest delight this spring has been to notice a redstart in our lilac and apple trees. I used to look at pictures of them in my Herbert Zim Golden Bird Guide as a little kid, and the American redstart was so fancy! I had no idea how tiny they are--small like warblers (I thought they were more oriole sized).

[pameladean]

Restarts are the best! We get them during migration and they breed in parts of Minnesota in the summer. They actually are warblers. Raphael and I decided at some point that their "see see see SEE IT" call actually sounded like a squeaky dog toy, so if we want to silently indicate the presence of a redstart, we can just open and close a fist as if we were squeezing a dog toy.

P.

[asakiyume]

That's exactly what they sound like! Wheezy like that!

[pameladean]

They look as if they'd have a pretty song, not a hilarious one. P.

[graydon]

Yay, catbirds!

It's not especially melodious here but there was, late last night, a red fox darting across the lawn.

[pameladean]

Oh, that's excellent! Foxes are not under any obligation to be melodious, fortunately. I wouldn't mind seeing more of them, but while we have them, they prefer the parks and lakes.

P.

[graydon]

It was indeed excellent! (as well as a comprehensive startlement.)

They're hard to see; there could be five across the lawn every night, and I'd still have that exact few seconds to be in the right place to look up. (I am thinking back to tracks in the snow and thinking it might be most nights, if not five foxes.)

[pameladean]

Oh, how lovely!

I would probably mistake fox tracks for dog tracks? Maybe not. Mostly we have squirrel, rabbit, and raccoon, as you might expect.

P.

[graydon]

In the statistical abstract, fox tracks will have individual paw prints that are longer than wide (where dog tracks will be at least as wide as long, and might be wider than long), the toes are arranged so the nails are all pointing fore-and-aft, and the distance of the prints from the sagittal plane is less than it is with dogs (though not zero or nearly zero) as it is with cats. And generally prints will be on the small side, compared to domestic dogs; fourteen kilos/thirty pounds is as large as red foxes get.

All of this is pretty darn vague; my take on the tracks in the winter was some confusion, because they didn't look like cat tracks, but who would be walking their dog from my back yard to my front hard in the middle of the night? They were obviously not right for a coyote; too small. I didn't think of foxes until I actually saw one, and the light bulb came on.

[minoanmiss]

This is so EVOCATIVE. I can HEAR THEM. OMG eeeeee!

[athenais]

What a beautiful song! We don't get them in the west. They don't travel over the Rockies, I guess.

[pameladean]

That made me curious, and I looked up a range map. I think you are entirely correct.

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Gray_Catbird/maps-range

You get mockingbirds, though.

P.

[athenais]

We do, indeed. They don't sing as prettily, though.

[sartorias]

How lovely, all those birds!

[pameladean]

We are very lucky. I do think my failure to mow the back yard -- now deliberate rather than a result of low energy and an increasing reluctance to do anything in hot weather, plus increasing annoyance at the city's suburban aesthetics where lawns are concerned -- has helped concentrate birds. But it was a very quiet winter and I was concerned.

P.

[sovay]

There was a brief period in which cardinals, like hawkers at the intermission of an Elizabethan play, cried, "What cheer?" for a while. But then the catbirds began again.

Prrrrt.

I was startled by some of the others, which were less Siamese and more pure meow.

This is so cool!

[pameladean]

Prrrrt.

They sometimes say that too, but I couldn't find a good sound file.

P.

[minnehaha]

Well, heck yes.

You have enthused about catbirds before, and I have wondered idly how come I know nothing about catbirds. Without, of course, lifting a finger to do the simple work of finding out for myself.

So this post was a real delight for me. I'll be listening for the catbird now. I have seen a bare few chickadees this year; it's not just you. The house finches are nesting on our deck like they always do, and this year we have a robin. She has set herself up so that we can see into the nest from windows. V. exciting. B. was taking pix with his long lens.

I'm also enjoying the orioles flashing their bright colors around. They like the linden tree in the neighbor's yard and I think they visit her feeders, but I don't know what she offers.

K.

[julian]

I belieeeve I met a catbird on my walk the day before yesterday. This was near a local lake, further into the woods. For awhile I thought it was a thrush, but they're very different shapes. Also, this one has the brown cap.



I also love how this one fluffed itself up.