This week’s Bird of the Week, compliments of the Weminuche Audubon Society and Audubon Rockies, is the gray catbird.
As its name suggests, in appearance this is not a flashy bird. Catbirds are slate gray, wear a small black cap and have a long black tail. The only flash of color adorning them is a rusty red patch hidden under the tail. Their gray color serves to hide them well in the dark, dense thickets of shrubs and tangles of vines where they spend their time.
Their remarkable behaviors make them anything but dull birds. Along with mockingbirds and thrashers, the catbird belongs to the Mimidae family of birds whose members are known to mimic sounds in their environment. Catbirds remember and replay musical notes, whistles, squawks, other bird songs and noises they hear and weave them into their songs. The mewing calls they make from deep within the brush gave them their name.
When moved to sing, the male catbird pops out of hiding to perch up high and sing his loud song to declare his territory. Holding his tail down gives him a hunchbacked look.
His rambling song may go on for 10 minutes nonstop. This choice of a prominent perch to show his prowess led to the saying that someone in charge is “sitting in the catbird seat.”
The catbirds that we host in summer may have traveled from winter grounds as far south as Central America. Incredibly, banding records suggest that individual catbirds often return to the same nesting site that they migrated from the previous summer. What a memory. We often see them near water where there is a supply of the insects and fruits that they eat.
Unlike the hundreds of other bird species that regularly raise cowbird chicks as their own, gray catbirds rarely do. Although cowbirds frequently deposit eggs in catbird nests, studies have demonstrated that a catbird learns the look of the first egg she lays. If a cowbird sneaks in later and deposits an egg, the catbird recognizes it as different and tosses it out of the nest.
If you stroll the Riverwalk this summer, be on the lookout for this extraordinary bird.
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