I heard lots of meows in the neighborhood and forest preserves these past few weeks. They weren’t cats. They were catbirds. Gray catbirds to be exact.
The robin-sized gray catbird sports a lovely shade of gray overall, with a black cap, dark eye, black in the wings and contrasting bright rufous under its tail. For some reason, this species was particularly common throughout May this year, at least where I was hiking.
Often, I heard one sing its jumbled, chatty phrases from a shrubby thicket, its favorite habitat. One even hid in the lower branches of my Norway spruce tree while singing and interjecting the sound which gave it its name. Meow. It really does sound like a cat’s mew.
Catbirds are related to two other birds we see in Illinois, the brown thrasher and the northern mockingbird. All three are in the Mimidae family, a group of birds with remarkably diverse songs and the ability to sing for minutes or more at a time.
The thrasher, less common than the catbird in the north, sings a series of doubled phrases, while mockingbirds repeat phrases at least three times.
I’ve heard both these species sing in Lake and Cook counties at various preserves, and they’re easy to distinguish by song alone.
The catbird sings as if it can’t make up its mind, sometimes caterwauling for five minutes or longer. This time of year, catbirds are ferreting out their nesting and feeding territories. As they chatter and call, they fly low across a trail, chasing one another and offering a glimpse before they dart into another thicket.
Sometimes they’ll perch in plain view, six feet or more above the ground on a branch of a tree near a thicket and sing for anyone, even humans, who want to listen. Other times, you may see snippets of their gray bodies as they probe leaves in thickets or on the ground to snatch beetles, ants, grasshoppers, caterpillars and moths, among other insects.
Many catbirds fly farther north into Wisconsin, Minnesota and southern Canada to breed, but some nest in our natural areas and even some neighborhoods in summer, lingering until fall when they and the young-of-the-year fly south to Florida and Central America.
Catbirds build nests on horizontal branches hidden in dense shrubs, small trees or vines, including dogwood, elderberry, hawthorn and honeysuckle.
One spring, a male catbird behaved as if it were setting up territory in the shrubby parts of our back yard. It often took grape jelly from an oriole feeder or perched on the elderberry, which would later provide the fruit it loves in late summer. It also sipped water from the bird bath.
Catbirds like to be near water, and we thought this would be the perfect place for a pair to raise a family. They built a nest in a shrub in our yard, but we never saw young or confirmed breeding success.
The next year, a catbird pair returned and eyed our yard again. The couple, however, decided there was a better place in the neighborhood for nesting, and so I had to walk down the street in early mornings in summer to hear its song.
This year, a pair of catbirds is looking over the yard again. We have some new homemade birdbaths. We’d love to be in the catbird seat this summer, watching them raise young.
The phrase, “in the catbird seat,” means having the best advantage or the upper hand. Some etymologists theorize that the phrase refers to the gray catbird, which hides in thickets, making “mocking calls.”
In the 1940s, Red Barber, a sportscaster for the Brooklyn Dodgers, used the phrase “sitting in the catbird seat” to refer to a batter who had a major advantage, for example, three balls and no strikes.
Ironically, this bird was named after one of its enemies, the cat, which often kills songbirds out of instinct and not necessarily to eat them. Cats are non-native predators that annually kill at least 1.3 billion birds and 6.3 billion mammals in the U.S.
Even a well-fed cat will kill birds and other small wildlife due to their predacious nature, according to a Rutgers University study. During fledgling season, which occurs in late spring and early summer, birds are especially susceptible to cat attack, the study says.
That’s why it’s best to leave your cats indoors, as I have done. I prefer hearing a cat meow indoors and a catbird give its mew-like call and jumbled songs outdoors.
Sheryl DeVore has worked as a full-time and freelance reporter, editor and photographer for the Chicago Tribune and its subsidiaries. She’s the author of several books on nature and the environment and co-author of a coming book on “Birds of the Midwest,” to be published by Timber Press. Send story ideas and thoughts to sheryldevorewriter@gmail.com.
