BRDL 19

    

2/10/22 - GRCA - Gray Catbird

This gray bird of bushes and thickets is aptly named. It's gray, and it's typical mewing call is a pretty good match for a house cat. What I didn't know until recently was how good of a mimic it is. I recall sitting outside of our friends Kurt and Rachel's house one day trying to figure out what strange bird songs were coming from their front bushes, when a friend said 'I think that's a catbird'. No way, I thought. There's no mewing. But sure enough - there is was. Also just learned that when catbirds sing their mimicked songs, they typically sing each phrase just once, as opposed to thrashers or mockingbirds, that sing multiple times. 

By Hari Krishnan - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89881817