In this blog post we'll talk about how our friends, the Gray Catbirds call Marietta, Georgia their Summer home. Gray Catbirds first visited our back deck on our 3rd or 4th year of feeding wild birds in our backyard. I went out to our back deck to refill the bird bath with fresh water and I thought just for a moment that I heard a cat's very typical "meow". I turned my head left and then right, but I found no cats or kittens prowling around the yard. With bird feeders and bird houses all over the yard, it's definitely something we keep in our thoughts to be aware of, and we have shouted and chased a few out of the yard (please don't ask about how I bark like a angry dog while giving chase lol).
"Okay, well I'm pretty sure I heard a Cat." I said softly to myself. Shrugging it off and turning around to go back inside, a medium-sized warm grey bird flew right in front of me and landed on a 10" terracotta plate full of mealworms. It turned its head as if to look directly at me and then it's beak opened slightly and it let out a perfect "MEOWWW".
I had read about Catbirds as a kid and knew for years that they were named for their cat-like calls, but I had never witnessed one in person. As a matter of fact, I had never even seen a Gray Catbird. But now, sitting right in front of me "mewing" there was one. They may be common in Georgia but for someone that spent countless hours outdoors fishing, hiking, mountain biking and more over the years, it seemed to me like more of a rare sighting!
I went in the back door of our house and called out to Lisa. "Babe, we have Catbirds!". "That's nice!" I heard back from the other room. We went back to doing whatever it was that we were doing before I went outside to refresh the bird bath water, and didn't think much more about it for a while. Just a few hours later, Lisa went out back to add some more mealworms to the feeders and was not even outside for 1 minute. She came running back inside shouting "I think there is a cat somewhere under our deck!". "NO!" I shouted back. "That's the Gray Catbird I was telling you about earlier!"
Over the next few weeks we started seeing them each morning and evening. A Pair of catbirds would come down from the lower limbs of the trees that hang over our deck and snap up several mealworms or suet nuggets at a time, before retreating to the same branches to finish eating them. It wasn't long before they were there nearly every hour of the day, and we realized one afternoon there were three of them! The new, fluffy addition to the bunch was clearly a juvenile but we were both very surprised that it was nearly identical in coloration when compared with the parents, except it was a bit fluffier! I've taken a couple of Gray Catbird Videos this year which I'll add below for your viewing/listening pleasure.
Here is the video of the Gray Catbird and I exchanging "mew" and "meow" sounds - we hope you'll get a good laugh at this!
Here are our favorite 2 food options for attracting these wonderful birds to your yard. Both the suet nuggets and the dried mealworms can be found on Amazon with the links below:
Once Summer comes to an end, we start to see less and less of the Gray Catbird family. We have a neighborhood lake and we take our canoe out on the lake from time to time to fish and birdwatch. Sometimes in the thickest brush along the edge of the lake we'll hear the familiar "Mew" and "Meow" of our friends, the Gray Catbirds. By October though, they have moved further South to Florida or South Georgia and here they will stay until typically April or early May. Then, we look forward to the cycle starting over again and seeing new young Catbirds. Also, we named the first one we saw "Tigger". It seemed fitting!
Thanks for reading, everyone!
-BOWC
(Lisa & Dan)
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