Catcalls

The Gray Catbird, Dumetella carolinensis, gets its name from its “Mew” call:

Grey, with a black cap, the adults are bright chestnut under the tail:

Late this summer, the elderberries were ripening, much to the catbirds’ delight.

This one is a fledgling. It has no black cap yet, and its undertail is buff, not chestnut

It performed acrobatic manoeuvres to reach the berries:

And it used its wing to lift the bunch of berries closer to its beak:

Catbirds are related to mockingbirds, and like them they are accomplished mimics. Its song is long and complex, using snippets from other birds’ songs. It is able to control the separate sides of its syrinx to produce two notes either alternately or simultaneously:

The females sing too, but much less and more quietly.

Cornell’s Birds of the World says it is “believed to mimic at least 44 species of birds, gray tree frog (Hyla versicolor), and a variety of mechanical sounds”, although others say the huge song repertoire (170 syllables were recorded in a 4.5 minute song) is largely the result of improvisation and invention.

The elderberries were also being eaten by a hummingbird!! This behavior is rarely reported. I suspect that a catbird had punctured a berry, and the hummingbird came to the juice, just as it will come to sugar-water on a feeder. And the elderberries of course have bright red stalks!

PS The catbird Mew call is given in various contexts, including when a recent fledgling is approached by a predator (i.e. me).

PPS Unless otherwise stated, all my sound files including these two are my own recordings. I just use Merlin, and my iPhone, so they are not professional quality. I do some editing to shorten the files by cutting out irrelevant stretches.