The Catbird {Dumetella carolinensis) 

 By Henry W. Henshaw 



Length : About 9 inches. The slaty gray plumage and black cap and tail 

 are distinctive. 



Range: Breeds throughout the United States west to New Mexico, Utah, 

 Oregon and Washington, and in southern Canada : winters from the Gulf States 

 to Panama. 



Habits and economic status : In many localities the catbird is one of the 

 commonest birds. Tangled growths are its favorite nesting places and retreats, 

 but berry patches and ornamental shrubbery are not disdained. Hence the bird 

 is a familiar dooryard visitor. The bird has a fine song, unfortunately marred 

 by occasional cat calls. With habits similar to those of the mocking bird and 

 a song almost as varied, the catbird has never secured a similar place in popular 

 favor. Half of its food consists of fruit, and the cultivated crops most often 

 injured are cherries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries. Beetles, ants, 

 crickets and grasshoppers are the most important element of its animal food. 

 The bird is known to attack a few pests, as cutworms, leaf beetles, clover-root 

 curculio, and the periodical cicada, but the good it does in this way probably 

 does not pay for the fruit it steals. The extent to which it should be protected 

 may perhaps be left to the individual cultivator ; that is. it should be made 

 lawful to destroy catbirds that are doing manifest damage to crops. 



The catbird easily establishes a twofold right to its common name. To the 

 eye, the plumage is the blue-gray of the common maltese lounger about our 

 homes ; to the ear, its frequent querulous caterwauls that greet an intruder into 

 its retreat suggest some of tabby's nightly lamentations. 



The catbird belongs to a family of singers. The famous mocking bird and 

 our much praised thrasher are its near of kin. while the voluble wrens are its 

 more distant relative. It is no wonder, then, that the catbird's glor)^ is its song. 



Occasionally the catbird returns to the state before the middle of April. 

 The majority wait until the first week in May. By the middle of May they are 

 in full song. 



From the coverts of the thicket comes a wondrous burst of song ; 

 Tripping gaily, pressing, crowding, flood the liquid notes along! 

 'Tis the catbird, dear old Orpheus, with a heart as full of joy 

 As our quaint old Quaker poet or his whistling bare-foot boy. 



A hundred and fifty years ago the catbird received its first scientific name. 

 It was then called a flycatcher. In 1831 it was given a new name by Swainson, 

 an English naturalist, who must have been very much charmed by our blue-gray 

 singer, for he not only named it Orpheus, after the famous singer of ancient 

 Thrace, but painted the lily by calling it Orpheus felivox, the sweet-voiced 



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