Yardbird # 38 - Gray Catbird (and # 39...)

These elegant looking little birds show up in late April/early May every spring, a most welcome arrival.  Their name comes from their color (well, that's obvious!) and the cat-like "mews" that they make.  A member of the mimic thrush family (like mockingbirds) they have extensive vocabularies and tend to be vocal throughout the year.  By my best reckoning, there are at least four pairs nesting on our property this summer.  They favor low, dense brushy habitat for their nests, and if the vegetation is thorny, so much the better.  There is a fair amount of chasing and posturing going on as they defend their nesting areas, but they are really pretty easy-going birds.  This was taken from a distance of about 10 feet with about a 10% crop and nothing else.  

For the first time that I'm aware of, we also have brown thrashers nesting on our property (they prefer the same kind of habitat for nests as the catbirds) which is very exciting.  I'm hoping to see thrasher fledglings soon.  

Several male house sparrows showed up today, making my heart stop.  I chased them off a couple of times and haven't seen them since.  But this "bird mom" is going to rest much easier when the chickadees and bluebirds fledge next week.  Which brings me to today's Extra, Yardbird # 39, the House Sparrow.  This one is a female, less deadly than the males as they don't evict nest tenants.

Sefferdog has kindly put a bunch of darkling beetles in the male to me to replace the ones that didn't make the last trip so well.  If you missed it, these beetles are what's needed to grow my own mealworms.  And since the titmice, cardinals and bluebirds seem to have developed an addiction to mealies, raising my own makes sense.  Hubs is horrified, but stoic in his acceptance that the ship that he lovingly refers to as his wife is completely out of control.  He's married to a mealworm farmer - not what he signed up for...

Speaking of Hubs, we both enjoyed a day of working outside - although truth be told, he did most of the work while I farted around taking pictures.  The man deserves a medal.  

Three other shots on Flickr, starting HERE with an interesting fly-thingie

TTFN...
Debbi