A remarkable Gray Catbird mimics dozens of bird species (and a frog too!) in northern California. Listen as Greg Budney, former audio curator at the Macaulay Library, dissects the recording and notes each snippet of mimicked song.
Watch on youtube "Singing with a Bird - James Taylor". He's playing guitar in a canyon, with his son Ben. The two of them are joined by a feathered canyon resident. Delightful !
We sat in our back porch and played this for the back yard catbirds...at one point we had 4 sitting not 6 feet from us responding to the audio. Too fun!
People look at me funny when I say my favorite bird is the Catbird but really, it is. A gentle little soul, tame to the point of taking bread from my hand & with the sweetest sounds in nature. Thank you so much for sharing this!!! =}
I ❤ them too! I've heard 2 of them quack like a Mallard as well. It was amazing! They're so curious and intelligent. Their little black 👀 are so engaging and bright. Much love to you!
I have a catbird mating pair that are excellent mimics! I just sit and listen and watch them imitate the myriad of birds I am fortunate to have in my yard and across the street in the woods. So beautiful. Thanks for sharing!
Gray Catbirds live in the thickets behind my house and I watch them every morning. Sometimes I place blueberries on the ground and then I watch them having a blueberry breakfast! They are elegant looking wild songbirds and friendly (to me anyway). When I stand under the cherry tree there is one who will perch and eat a cherry while I watch from a few inches away. I am happy that we have such trust.
This is really wonderful. It also reminds me of one of the pitfalls of attempting to identify birds by ear alone (particularly when you're relatively new to birding) -- the genius mimics of the bird world! Thanks to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for this excellent web series.
My first encounter with this incredible bird I will never forget! He was trying to imitate a rock wren and after ten or fifteen attempts he would throw his head back and wail “whaaa” it was the cutest thing!
Had a Gray Catbird nest in a bush right outside my window this spring. It was amazing to watch the mother build the nest, lay the eggs, watch the eggs hatch, watch the babies grow/feed, and today the last one finally flew the nest. The chicks would sit on different branches and practice flapping their wings. The ritual for each one to leave the bush was the same. The mother would stand on the ground, smack her tail 3 times into the ground, and the baby would launch itself into the air, then they scurried to hide under a different bush until the next one leaped out. It was pretty amazing to witness.
I have heard a catbird mimic the horn of a passing truck. It's amazing what they can do. I get them on my feeders all the time--they'll often try to scare off other birds by imitating the mating calls of owls up here.
The catbirds have been coming where I live for a few years. I'm not sure if it's been the same male for a while, but he has mimicked a Baltimore Oriole and a Northern Cardinal to near-perfection and now he's mimicking the dogs barking! What an interesting and wonderful bird.
We always had Catbirds in our bakcyard, in our old home as it was surrounded by 6 ft high hedges. Lost of cover for all kinds of birds. In our newly build home we don't have the varity of birds like we use to so I miss this particular bird songs...thanks for posting.
They are pretty incredible. I have one here in Mattawa, Ontario, Canada that returns every year. His vocabulary in also very extensive. He tries to mimic blue jays and has also tries to mimic the American kestrels that visit here in late spring. I enjoy his presence immensely. His joyful songs make me smile.
love the video great job. i have a hummingbird nest in my yard and a catbird nest 20' away, when baby hummingbird left the nest on 8/29/2012 , momma hummingbird got bored and is now feeding the two baby catbirds at their nest with the momma catbird they take turns momma hummer will wait till it's her turn to feed, i never seen this before they are great friends. video soon. mike silcott seaville n.j.
FalconADV I can’t believe you just said “cheeseburger” birds. That’s exactly what I’ve been calling them. I also have a bird that I call the Bernie bird. It’s call sounds like it is saying “Bernie, Bernie”. I live in central NJ.
We always like to joke that my mom is "the catbird whisperer" since the shy guys over at our house never seem to come around except when she's outside. Always fun for us to see these cuties.
Cool, I didn't know he was a mimic. "My" catbirds just mew! They are also very fond of the grape jelly I put out for the Orioles, and pick at my suet block too.
NEVER NOTICED A CATBIRD TILL THIS DAY IN ROCKFORD, IL HE IS AN AMAZING CREATURE WHAT A BEAUTIFUL SOUND. I WAS ON THE BACK PORCH WHEN HE FLEW DOWN ONLY TO TELL ME IN A LOUD SCREACH HE WAS INTERESTED IN THE BIRD SUET CAGE HANGING THERE SO I CREPT INDOORS TO LET HIM FEED HE CHOWED DOWN LIKE HE WAS VERY HUNGRY HOPE HE RETURNS VERY COOL BIRD.
Wow! I'm sitting in my back yard in Massachusetts, waiting to catch a catbird on the feeder to take a pic - so I'm playing your video to see it it works. When my kid was little, and I called her to come in, the catbird copied my saying "Claaaareeeee" - two birdies just showed up!!!
I finally Identified this bird that is enjoying my bird bath, and waits for me to freshen the water lol and this bird makes sure it's the first one to bathe. Sitting on my back porch, it's a lovely view and so alive. I own 3 acres, its all natural wooded acreage too, in Central Florida. I have such a wonderful variety of birds, more now late Spring. All week a Mother Doe is showing up to graze on the fallen birdseed with her half grown fawn. It's a sight to behold and experience...❤️ Try sitting outdoors quietly, you will be amazed what you all can see.
We have a catbird in our neighborhood in No. California who sings a seemingly inexhaustible repertoire of varied calls and sounds all night and into the morning. He's a virtuoso. I call him Mozart. He's been at it for many hours without stop and concertizes from the same tree with dense foliage every night and morning. I can still hear singing at 6:30 am after singing most of the night.
A few days ago I had left some watermelon rinds on my picnic table. A catbird came and started visiting and eating the pink parts of the rind. Now I leave about an inch of the fruit on the rind and get frequent visits. They also seem to really like my beauty berry bushes too. Sometimes cardinals also like the melon pieces.
No running rules for the catbird outbursts. .The Brown Thrasher sticks to his couplets,The Mockingbird is a Cluniac with his "golden section" three to ones.The catbird is in the hedgerow close to us ,and as you witnessed a visitor to backcountry. This stellar performer,though,breaks ranks with his tribe.Thank You for being there.
These are one of my favorite birds. We have oodles of them, generations that have nested in the shrubs around our yard for at least a decade. I look forward to hearing their evening serenades.
Beautifully done video! Was just listening to one in the trees outside the bedroom window and had to look out and see what was making all that different( and very LOUD) sound.
Aww. This is beautiful. We have a male this year who mimics the whistle we use to call his mate (a semi-tame female who has been coming/responding to our whistle to eat raisins just a few feet away since the summer of 2020). He even answers us back when we whistle.
Thank you for posting this... I love birds, and the catbird is becoming one of my favorites. I loved the last bit of information about 'being around' longer and appealing to potential mates! Truly amazing!
In the burbs of Philly the catbirds have me trained to bring them raisins whenever they appear on my deck! If I'm sitting eating breakfast they will fly into my view of even fly into the kitchen to get my attention. They go south in the fall but showed up on my deck chair one spring morning, same bird!
We live in the suburbs, with the usual mix of backyard birds. One morning I was awakened, shocked, to hear a wood thrush in the back yard. He sang for a while, just that one day, never to return. But a few days later I 'heard' him again. He returned in the song of a gray catbird, whose mimic was unmistakable. Our catbirds also routinely mimic northern cardinals, robins, chicadees. I 'm sure there are many others I'm just not quick enough to catch. I love the catbird, with his elegant gray morning suit and irrepressible burbling song.
The past week or so I thought I had a brown thrasher pair nesting in a tree outside my window, because I could hear the male doing mockingbird-like series of calls/songs, but with only 1-2 repetitions. I was excited because I like thrashers a lot, but it took a while before I was able to spot one of the birds making these sounds by my house. Just today I finally coaxed one out of the dense foliage by making a sp-sp-sp sound, and it wasn't a brown thrasher but one of these little gray cuties!!! I don't believe I've heard one since I was a little kid. I KNEW there was somtething familiar but long-ago about one of the sounds in this male's repertoire. --It was of course the nasal-y 'cat' calls, although to me it sounds more like a scolding gray squirrel. Kinda.
Thank you so much for this video! I've been saying all spring when I hear this mimic repertoire, "That guy is gettin' it!" Not realizing that it was a catbird I was hearing. I have only watched them "mew" on the feeder then this morning I went out in the backyard to spy the bird that was singing a dozen songs loud and proud. I had no idea that my lovely catbirds were responsible!
I would think that all those other birds would think to themselves "oh this apartments taken" and not move in. So the catbird sings all the songs each night to tell them all bugger off this is mine lol
Hi, Greg (c: You said the catbird does such mimicking in order to show he has been around for a number of breeding seasons, picking up these calls along the way . . . demonstrating to a potential mate that he will be able to survive while with her. Also, I consider > the calls could help to mark territory against other bird species, so they don't compete for food, maybe. But also using the noncompetitive birds' calls could help prove his robustness, as you say > he could be multi-tasking (c:
What amazing display of beauty, incredible! i never expected this bird could make all those sounds, i am from El Salvador, CentralAmerica and i once heard this bird but i will definitely read about this bird, once again, beatiful...
The grey catbirds I have in my backyard in Oakville (southern Ontario west of Toronto), mimics all the time - robin, red-winged blackbird, sometimes starling, and a host of other warbler-like sounds.
Oh my goodness, I had this same experience off my back patio along the creek where I live. An amazing series of songs from a bird in the tree.....sat for a long time amazed at the vocalizations. It was a catbird. :)
Wow, this is such an impressive breakdown of mimicry! It must have taken forever to figure out how many different species your catbird was mimicking. I finally realized that the catbirds in my neighborhood like to mimic vireos most often, when they aren't inventing their own phrases and sounds, of course. I had a very tame one in 2018 that ate raisins from my hand every day for 3 months. Until I put the suet feeder out during the summer, then you couldn't keep him away from the suet! I love my catbirds!
For years we have had catbirds in our neighborhood. There was always a few who like to sing in the dead of night, and they mimic everything from car alarms to microwave beeps, ducks, geese, children screaming in play, crickets, and any bird it hears. They will put on a show for hours! I have a family of catbirds here in my backyard - they are always first at the feeder in the morning, and last at dusk. They sometimes just sit with me, after all the other birds are long roosted for the night. They are polite at the feeder and the only birds that don't get alarmed and fly off at every little noise. They like coming close to me and when the food runs low, they wait patiently by till i replenish. Amazing sweet little birds. They love fruit - strawberries especially. One day I put out a strawberry, and when this one catbird realized what it was, he dropped a good peanut just to grab that strawberry! Thanks for the comparison songs, it fascinates me how well they mimic! And how they seem to "meow"!
This is very interesting to me, I am Mexican and most of my life I had lived in the center of my country, and in 2000-2003 I lived in the south (close to CANCUN) which is about 2000 kms from where I live now, and I had lived in some states of Mexico, there is a bird we call LUIS because that is what they say all the time and are very noisy LUIS, ¡LUIS! But en that place there were those birds too, but they were mute, they don t say LUIS ¡nothing! And also 2 times I saw a bird like the one you describe in this video perched in the top of a small tree singing, imitating a lot of different songs of different birds (which I didn t knew because I just have in there living for one year, but it sounds like this bird CATBIRD i guess in the sense that it sang a lot of different songs. (my English is imperfect I know)
Although I do not know different bird calls very well, where I lived in Maryland we had catbirds everyday in the summer and I heard many of these "non-catbird" sounds coming from the occasional catbird. Admittedly it was very rare but I worked outside often and I would say one out of maybe 100 or more had such an unbelievable dynamic repertoire. Really a treat to hear ...you do not need to be an ornithologist to recognize these were very different bird calls, and ones only originating from other birds.
Very nice video--thank you! I had a catbird on my bathroom window today singing away, not knowing what kind of bird it was, I researched and found your video...
The moment I started paying attention to the boisterous bird outside my window was when he started mimicking a black backed gull. We're 5 miles inland from the south shore, Massachusetts, so it's unusual to hear sea birds here
Wonderful video! Learned so much! I have an eye for these special beauties and the info you gave just sealed the deal! Love them! 💃 We take great care of ours here at my home. And ALL the others too! 😊 It’s a family affair here. 💫
I'm here because I heard a wren outside my window this morning, when usually the wrens are around back working on their nest box. I look out my window and there's my catbird, he was imitating the wrens. I also think he's starting to imitate words 'pretty bird' because for 3-4 yrs I've had a cardinal who comes exactly at sun up and sun down each day/night and sings outside my window. When I have the window open (right next to my desk, so I'm sitting a foot from it) I say out the window "hello pretty bird", and this morning I swore I heard catbird say pretty bird a couple times just as our cockatiel does.
Thanks!! I have a mockingbird I go outside to listen to every time I wake up in the middle of the night since he is going through his repertoire between 1 AM and 3:30 AM every single night. Even does crickets. But i hear blue jay, baby jay, starling, baby starling, robin, etc. what I first noticed with the catbird is their ability to maneuver in flight. Probably the best flyer I've seen in New Jersey. From a standstill start they do this sweeping motion and often fly very low to the ground and stop on a dime. But not the way other birds do. They are definitely little sneaks too, Getting chased away by the mother Robin when she tries to feed a fledgling, the cat bird will swoop down and try to grab whatever it is the fledgling is having trouble with. But that's common to most species I guess. Survival of the fittest, and best able to steal. LOL
I'm blown away by this bird. He just showed up in our backyard yesterday. Singing so softly like a merwoo sound, then garbled like a human!! We had our cockatoos out there with us and he was singing along with them. Absolutely amazing!! Strange he'd be in the city..wonder what brought him here..??? London Ontario. Odd..
We have had Mockingbirds and Catbirds in the thickets behind our house (New Brunswick, Canada) for many years. I am starting to think that many of the songs I have I have only heard and attributed to the Mockingbird, were in fact the Catbirds!
Here too in CT! I hand feed my Catbirds. They know their names and come hopping around gardens up to the deck. They even brought fledglings and fed them on the chair on my deck. They sit on chair and look in window for me. I always seem to hit just right when I open door and say KAT she comes and I feed her raisins and tiny round suet balls. LOVE Catbirds! ❤️ The baby meows a lot. Not old enough to mimic though just today she gave me a new sound, that is why I'm hear listening for it.
I love this video. I'm thinking that since it was found in an area where you don't expect to find Catbirds, it only had other animals to mimic and built up a more diverse repertoire than Catbirds that are around each other a lot.
Most of my feathers were given to me by the birds who dropped them, except a few that were given to me by human brethren. I wouldn't kill my feathered brother to get his feathers, I thank him for the ones he gives to me. Wanbli Wiaka was given to me by a Lakota Vietnam Vet. All are sacred. Life is sacred.
I live at Lake Wabamun, Alberta, Canada. Tuesday June 7,2016 I was gifted with wonderful sounds and I spotted the bird. There were no mewing sounds so I thought perhaps it was not a Cat Bird, but the most beautiful variety of sounds and mimicry going on as the description for the Catbird. Never saw or heard anything like it before! Beautiful singing and much variance and variety of vocals. Thank you for your video. I am now a first hand witness of the Cat Bird's extensive vocal repertoire.
I just saw my first catbird of the year out my back window. I was so confused the first time I heard one of their calls, years ago; they're certainly impressive vocalists. :)
Love our catbird, I always thought their sound was calling my sons name ,Aaron in a nasal way! But we have lots of them and one really mimics other birds alot!
eu chamo-lhes os músicos das florestas impressionantes encontros com o silencio da natureza, numa dimensão única a que somos transportados, estes sons de frágeis criaturas de Deus que nos ajudam a desfrutar o que de mais belo encontramos pelas florestas jardins bosques aonde quer que estejam são os anfitriões...
Wow!!! I have one that nests in my holly bush near my deck ! I always thought I had a mocking bird too, but it is the cat bird that is singing all the different bird calls!
This was spectacular, I had no idea the catbirds did that. I only just photographed one a couple weeks ago here in Ontario, Canada. I must find and observe him again. Thank you
I have a few that will swoop in and perch on a branch or the clothesline and basically just shout at me when I go outside in the morning, sometimes even just a few feet away haha. Lately they've been mimicking the robin's calls
