Bird Profile
Gray Catbird
A slate gray bird that says mew from inside a thicket, sings a rambling song stitched out of other birds, and will take grape jelly and mealworms while ignoring every seed you own.
The short answer
- The cat-like mew from inside a thicket is the identification. Nothing else in a US yard makes that call.
- Catbirds are slate gray all over with a black cap, a long tail and rusty chestnut feathers under the tail base.
- They will not eat seed. Offer grape jelly, halved fruit, raisins, mealworms or suet dough instead.
- No dense shrub layer, no catbirds. They need thickets, brambles or a hedge to work out of, not lawn.
- They mimic like a mockingbird but ramble, rarely repeating a phrase, and often work in a quiet warble.
At a glance
- Scientific name
- Dumetella carolinensis
- Length
- 8.3 to 9.4 in (21 to 24 cm)
- Wingspan
- 8.7 to 11.8 in (22 to 30 cm)
- Weight
- 0.8 to 2.0 oz (23 to 56 g)
- Range
- Breeds across the US east of the Rockies and southern Canada. Winters along the Gulf and southeast coasts, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
- Favorite foods
- Fruit, grape jelly, mealworms, suet dough, insects
- Best feeder
- Jelly or oriole feeder, open tray with fruit, mealworm dish
- At feeders
- April to October, only where dense shrub cover is close by
The Gray Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis) is usually heard before it is seen, and what you hear is a cat. The call is a flat, nasal, complaining mew delivered from deep inside a shrub, and it is the fastest identification of any songbird in an eastern yard.
The bird itself is plain in a way that is easy to like: slate gray from head to tail, a neat black cap, a long tail it flicks and cocks, and a patch of rich chestnut under the tail base that shows when it drops down or turns away.
It will not touch your seed. Roughly half the annual diet is fruit and the rest is insects, so the feeder that works is a jelly dish, a fruit tray or a cup of mealworms, placed where a nervous bird can reach it from cover. This profile covers identification against mockingbird and thrasher, the mimicry, the food that works, the shrub habitat requirement, and the unusual defense catbirds mount against cowbirds.
How to identify a Gray Catbird#
Uniform slate gray, about 9 inches (23 cm) long, slim, with a long tail often held cocked at an angle. The cap is black and cleanly defined. The bill is thin, straight and black, the eye dark, and the legs dark.
The one splash of color is under the tail: the undertail coverts are rusty chestnut, hidden most of the time and obvious when the bird tips forward or flies away from you. Males and females look identical, and juveniles look like duller adults.
Behavior is part of the identification. Catbirds skulk. They work through the interior of a hedge, hop on the ground under shrubs flicking leaves aside, and pop into the open for a few seconds at a time.
Confusion species#
| Bird | Why it gets confused | How to separate it |
|---|---|---|
| Northern Mockingbird | Gray, long tail, mimic | Paler with white belly, big white wing flashes, repeats phrases |
| Brown Thrasher | Same thickets, mimic | Rufous brown above, heavily streaked below, yellow eye |
| European Starling | Dark, similar size | Short tail, spotted plumage, yellow bill in spring, walks on lawns |
| American Robin | Similar size, ground foraging | Red-orange breast, upright posture, feeds in the open |
| Female Brown-headed Cowbird | Plain gray-brown | Thick conical bill, shorter tail, feeds in flocks on open ground |
The mew, the song and the mimicry#
Catbirds belong to the same family as mockingbirds and thrashers, and they mimic. The song is a long, disjointed, unhurried string of squeaks, whistles, gurgles and stolen phrases, including fragments of other birds, tree frogs and sometimes mechanical sounds.
The structural rule is the useful one: a Brown Thrasher repeats each phrase about twice, a Northern Mockingbird repeats each phrase three or more times, and a catbird almost never repeats at all. If the performance rambles on without ever doubling back, it is a catbird.
They also sing quietly. A catbird will sit in a hedge producing a soft, almost muttered version of the song for minutes at a time, audible only from a few feet away.
Learn one sound and you will find them everywhere
The mew is unmistakable and constant. Catbirds give it as alarm, as contact and apparently out of general irritation. Once you know it, you will discover catbirds in hedgerows, park edges and suburban yards you have walked past for years.
Where and when you will see them#
Catbirds breed across the United States east of the Rockies and north into southern Canada, with a patchy extension into parts of the interior west and Pacific Northwest. They arrive in the eastern states from late April into May and depart through September and October.
Most of the population winters along the Gulf Coast, in Florida, and south into Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. A minority hold on through winter along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts wherever fruiting shrubs persist, and those birds are the ones that show up at winter jelly and suet.
The habitat requirement is absolute: a dense low tangle. Hedgerows, brambles, overgrown fence lines, streamside thickets, shrub borders and suburban plantings that have been allowed to grow together. They avoid mature forest interior as thoroughly as they avoid open lawn.
What catbirds eat and the feeder setup that works#
Across the year the diet runs close to half fruit and half invertebrates, with insects dominating in the breeding season and fruit taking over from late summer onward. Nestlings are fed on insects.
| Food | Catbird response | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Grape jelly | Excellent | Small amounts, cleaned often |
| Halved oranges, chopped apple, grapes | Excellent | Skewer or open tray |
| Mealworms | Excellent | Live outperforms dried |
| Soaked raisins and currants | Good | Soak first so they stay soft |
| Suet dough and soft suet cakes | Taken | Use no-melt formulas in heat |
| Peanut fragments, sunflower hearts | Occasional | Not a draw on their own |
| Sunflower in the shell, millet, nyjer, cracked corn | Ignored | Wrong bird entirely |
An oriole and jelly feeder does double duty, since catbirds use the same jelly cups and orange spikes as Baltimore Orioles. A shallow mealworm feeder works if it is sited low and near cover. A simple open tray with cut fruit is often the best option of all, and there is a build for one in the DIY orange and jelly oriole feeder.
Place any of these within a few feet of the shrub line at about 4 to 5 feet (1.2 to 1.5 m). A catbird will not cross 25 feet (7.5 m) of open lawn to reach jelly when there is a hedge 3 feet (1 m) from an alternative.
Keep jelly small, shallow and clean
Grape jelly spoils fast in heat, ferments, grows mold and can mat the feathers of small birds that fall into a deep cup. Put out a tablespoon or two at a time in a shallow dish, refresh it daily in warm weather, and rinse the dish every time. Take it in if it goes cloudy or sticky.
Nesting and the cowbird defense#
The nest is a bulky, untidy cup of twigs, bark strips, grapevine and leaves, lined with fine rootlets, built 3 to 10 feet (1 to 3 m) up in a dense shrub or vine tangle. Both birds gather material and the female does the building.
Clutches are typically 3 to 4 eggs, and they are worth seeing: deep unmarked turquoise blue-green. The female incubates for around 12 to 13 days, both parents feed the young, and the chicks leave the nest at roughly 10 to 11 days. Two broods a season is normal.
Catbirds are among the small group of North American songbirds that reliably recognize and remove brown-headed cowbird eggs, puncturing and ejecting them rather than raising the chick. Most open-cup nesters in the same habitat cannot do this, which is one reason catbirds hold up well in fragmented landscapes.
They defend the nest area aggressively, mobbing snakes, cats and people, and are known to attack the eggs and nestlings of other birds nesting nearby.
Habitat: the part that actually decides it#
If a yard is lawn plus mature shade trees, no amount of jelly will produce a resident catbird. If there is a hedge, a bramble patch, a viburnum thicket, a tangle at the back fence or a good brush pile, one will very likely find you.
Practical ways to get there:
- Let one boundary go thick. A run of shrubs planted close enough to grow together gives catbirds the interior corridor they want.
- Plant fruit. Serviceberry, dogwood, elderberry, viburnum, blackberry, winterberry and wild cherry all feed them directly. See native plants for birds.
- Skip the fall cleanup on that section. Leaf litter under shrubs is where they forage.
- Keep cats indoors. A bird that spends its life within 6 feet (1.8 m) of the ground in shrubbery is one of the most heavily hit by cat predation, covered in cats and birds.
Put fruit out during migration, not just in summer
Catbirds moving through in May and again in September will use a fruit tray for a day or two even where no pair is nesting. A halved orange and a few grapes in the last week of April, kept up for two weeks, is the cheapest way to find out whether catbirds are passing through your yard at all. More on this in feeding birds during migration.
Population and conservation#
Gray Catbirds remain common and widespread, with broadly stable long-term trends. They tolerate suburban and edge landscapes better than most shrub-nesting songbirds, partly because of the cowbird ejection behavior and partly because the messy edges they need still exist in yards, parks and roadsides.
The pressures on them are the familiar ones: loss of the shrub layer to lawn and to tidy landscaping, outdoor cats, window collisions during nocturnal migration, and habitat loss on Caribbean and Central American wintering grounds.
A catbird setup that works#
- Dense shrub cover along at least one boundary, allowed to grow into a thicket.
- Grape jelly or cut fruit in a small shallow dish within a few feet of that cover, out by late April.
- Mealworms in a low dish during nesting season, when insects are the priority.
- Water at ground level near the shrubs; catbirds bathe often and stay close to cover.
- Leaf litter left alone under the hedge, which is where they do most of their foraging.
Frequently asked questions#
What bird sounds like a cat in my bushes?
A Gray Catbird. The call is a drawn-out, nasal, complaining mew that sounds startlingly like a house cat, given from inside dense shrubs where the bird stays hidden. They give it all through the breeding season and use it as an alarm, so if you walk near a nest you will hear it repeatedly.
What do gray catbirds eat at feeders?
Grape jelly, halved oranges, chopped apple, soaked raisins, live or dried mealworms, and soft suet dough. Roughly half their annual diet is fruit and the rest is insects, so nothing in a seed feeder interests them. They will occasionally take peanut fragments or sunflower hearts, but fruit and mealworms are what actually brings them in.
How do you tell a catbird from a mockingbird?
Catbirds are uniformly slate gray with a neat black cap, a plain wing, and rusty chestnut under the base of the tail. Mockingbirds are paler gray with a white belly, bold white wing patches that flash in flight, and white outer tail feathers. Their songs differ too: a mockingbird repeats each phrase three or more times, a catbird rambles on without repeating.
Do catbirds migrate?
Yes. Most Gray Catbirds leave the breeding range in fall, migrating at night to the Gulf Coast, Florida, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. A modest number winter along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts where fruiting shrubs hold on, and those birds do use feeders through the winter.
How do I attract catbirds to my yard?
Give them cover first: a hedge, bramble patch, viburnum thicket or brush pile they can move through without exposing themselves. Then put out grape jelly or fruit in a small dish near that cover from late April. Catbirds find food by working an edge, so a feeder in the open is much less likely to be used than one tucked at the shrub line.
Are catbirds good or bad to have around?
Good. They eat large numbers of insects through the breeding season, they are one of the few songbirds that recognize and eject cowbird eggs from their nests, and they are entertaining. They can be aggressive toward other birds near a nest and they will help themselves to soft fruit in a garden, which is the only real complaint against them.