Field Notes—

The Catbird Sings

By Curtiss Clark

In the blue hour, before dawn when the night has exhausted itself and the first dark cobalt emissaries of morning light slip into the sky, there is silence. It is the pause between days, not fixed on the clock like midnight, but dutifully observed in nature nonetheless. In this small interstice there is nothing left to be done and nothing yet to be done. And then the catbird sings.

The catbird in our yard sits in the birch tree outside the bedroom window — a spot he has chosen no doubt for its proximity to summer’s successive courses of strawberries at the back step, sour cherries in the yard, and grapes at the stone wall. He won’t go near the birdfeeders, but he loves the fruit. Sometimes, however, I think he has chosen his perch by the bedroom window to assure his invocation of the new day has an audience.

And what a speech it is. The catbird does not have the reputation of the mockingbird for singing. But like the mockingbird and the brown thrasher, the catbird is a mimic thrush, which means that it does not have much of a signature song, but mimics other bird’s songs and even other sounds it hears — like rusty gate hinges or squeaky barrow wheels. I counted more than 60 separate sounds in a soliloquy of the catbird in our birch tree one morning, and I didn’t start counting until after he had been at it for about a minute.

The mockingbird is the preening, prancing, self-absorbed crooner of the avian world, often positioning himself atop a phone pole, and leaping straight into the air for an even more prominent position as he sings. Mockingbirds will repeat a phrase several times, as if patronizing listeners who might have missed a particularly impressive warble the first, second, or third time around. By contrast, the catbird seems to have stage fright and is often heard but not seem as he sings from the middle of a thicket or hedgerow. And he rushes through his repertoire, never repeating himself, getting it all out like a tortured artist relieving himself of the burden of his genius.

I stalked our catbird over the course of two days to get the partially obscured portrait of him in his slate gray suit, black tails, and black beret that appears with this column. He was shy and dismissive of my obvious interest in him. I think a mockingbird would have been more accommodating — perhaps providing his own lighting and studio backdrop.

One thing the catbird has that the mockingbird doesn’t is the mewling call that punctuates his songs and gives him his name. It’s a sound that never fails to set the tails twitching on the bird-watching cats lounging on our windowsills. The insult is almost too much for them to bear.

For all their vocal tricks, birds have no vocal cords. The voice box of a bird is unlike that of other animals. It is called a syrinx after the Arcadian river nymph of Greek mythology who was turned into a reed by water spirits to elude the amorous pursuit of Pan. The frustrated Pan, evidently needing an outlet for his passion, cut the reed into varying lengths and fashioned it into the very first Pan pipe.

Not every bird produces music of the gods, however. Rock doves, more commonly known as pigeons, have only a pair of muscles attached to their syrinx and consequently can only squeeze the air moving through it in one way. The pigeon’s entire repertoire consists of one sound — “coo.”

Great bird singers like the catbird have a multiplicity of muscles controlling their syrinx, directing and compressing air to produce an incredible range of sound, including harmonics and multiple tones at different frequencies.

If the catbird in our birch tree is any indication, these muscles are built for endurance as well as versatility. His is the first song of the day, and the last in the evening twilight. It’s a long day for the catbird — and a long season. They show up in May and sing right through the summer, though with decreasing regularity as fall approaches. And then they literally disappear into the night.

The catbird spends its winters in the deep south or Mexico. Some have been spotted as far south as Panama in the winter months. But few people see the bird migrating since it only travels at night, stopping along the way in the blue hour to rest in that small silent gap where there is nothing left to be done and nothing yet to be done. And then it sings.