The Catbird 
279 
A Bird of 
the Shrubbery 
of the bird, his earnestness and entire satisfaction, seem somehow out 
of keeping with the result. But there is much that is pleasing — much 
melody — in the Catbird’s song if we but give it consideration. It is not 
a loud song ; not one that commands our attention, and not in a class with 
songs of Thrushes and Grosbeaks or the best Sparrow songs, but it is 
well suited to its surroundings, to the cool shade of deep shrubbery and 
the tangle of damp thickets, and it takes a prominent place in the wild- 
bird chorus. The Catbird is by no means restricted to the garden shrub- 
bery, but is equally at home down in the vegetable patch, among the 
grape-arbors, in the blackberry-briars bordering the orchard or down 
the lane that leads to the spring-house; and as you 
stroll along the old sunken road in the early evening 
one or more Catbirds are constantly in attendance, 
darting along the rails of the decaying fence or perching for a moment 
on the top of one of the uprights, ever full of interest in your movements. 
Out in the swamp, too, bordered with blackberry-bushes and wild 
plums, and overgrown with alder, spice-wood and fox-grape, we find 
Catbirds. As we penetrate the shady interior, bending below the green 
canopy and springing from tussock to tussock, we meet with the familiar 
protesting cry, the same apparent inquisitiveness to know what we are 
up to ; and in among the dense tangle of grape-vine and greenbrier, we 
may find the nest as securely placed as in the garden shrubbery. Once, 
I remember, while exploring a swamp, I made a little squeaking noise 
with my lips placed against the back of the hand, such as is often em- 
ployed to attract birds, and in a moment I had a small mob of excited 
Catbirds all around me, more than I supposed could possibly be within 
hearing. These swampy thickets probably harbor more Catbirds than 
any other place, notwithstanding the fact that in my mind the bird is 
more intimately associated with the dooryard of the farmhouse. In- 
deed, the swampy thickets and bushy borders of streams were probably 
the original home of the Catbirds before the advent of man, and it is 
in a certain swamp that I usually hear them first, and here, too, at the 
height of the breeding season, that we get their song at its best. 
The Catbird retires southward in autumn, although occasionally as 
far north as New Jersey and southern Pennsylvania, 
or even New England, we come across an isolated Cat- Migration 
bird that is wintering north of his usual range in 
some sheltering woodland tangle of greenbier, or among the dense growth 
of bayberry-bushes on the coast. Here he manages to subsist on such ber- 
ries as the autumnal migrants have passed by, or upon stray insects that 
are coaxed forth on mild days in winter by the warmth of the mid-day sun. 
At Philadelphia, the first Catbirds arrive in the spring between April 
15 and 24, and they are generally distributed by the 29th. In the 
autumn, the last one has usually departed by the middle of October. 
There is a certain amount of feeling against the Catbird in some 
parts of the country on account of the fruit and berries that it consumes. 
