106: Gray Catbird

The Gray Catbird is a vocal bird, capable to mimicking many other types of bird. These birds are long lived (one was banded for nearly eighteen years), and the researcher in that video believes that mimicry of other birds is one way that the males demonstrate to potential mates that they have had a wealth of experiences and have encountered many different types of birds in their extensive travels and lifetimes. Try not to think of them as guys whose dating profile photos feature them standing in front of Machu Picchu.

Their name comes from the supposedly cat-like mewing sound that some people think they make. I cannot hear anything cat-like in this noise and am convinced that birders describe bird calls the way sommeliers describe all the imaginary flavors in wine.

They spend their breeding season throughout much of the United States (aside from the southern west coast) and southern Canada, then migrate south to spend their winters in Florida (if they’re east coast birds) or Central America (if they’re from further west). In the tropics where they overwinter, they are used to eating fruit, so even though they primarily eat insects in the breeding season, they will happily eat raisins that you put in a feeder. Here’s a poem about them that mentions that!

I loved this article about the Gray Catbird that talked about the many different environments that they live in due to migration: “Others go further south to the tropics – to the forests of Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America.  There, they share the woods with jaguar, tapir, fer-de-lance and toucans. Catbirds return to the same site on the wintering grounds every year as well. Your backyard catbird might spend the winter in the shadow of Mayan ruins in Guatemala or perhaps in the Florida Everglades.” That part inspired me for today’s drawing: