Gray Catbird, singing
Dumetella carolinensis
Gray Catbird · Arverne Preserve · 20 June 2026
A Gray Catbird singing from the thicket at Arverne, a bird of dense shrubbery across the eastern half of the continent, and one of the more conversational birds in any thicket, often answering back if you talk to it.
Named for a mewing call that sounds startlingly like a cat, though what is coming out here is the song proper: a long, rambling series of notes, rarely repeated, that puts the catbird in the same family as mockingbirds and thrashers. All slate grey but for the black cap and a rusty patch under the tail that does not show in this pose.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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