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Catbird   /kˈætbˌərd/   Listen
Catbird

noun
1.
Any of various birds of the Australian region whose males build ornamented structures resembling bowers in order to attract females.  Synonym: bowerbird.
2.
North American songbird whose call resembles a cat's mewing.  Synonyms: Dumetella carolinensis, gray catbird, grey catbird.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Catbird" Quotes from Famous Books



... Champ-au-Haut the next afternoon. Here and there on the mountain side and along the highroad he noticed the massed pink and white clusters of the sheep laurel. Every singing bird was in full voice; thrush and vireo, robin, meadow lark, song-sparrow and catbird were singing as birds sing but once in the whole year; when the mating season is at its height and the long migratory flight northwards is forgotten in the supreme instinctive joy of the ever-new ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... calling!" muttered Hawkeye, with an inward laugh, "to go through life, like a catbird, mocking all the ups and downs that may happen to come out of other men's throats. Well, friend, I suppose it is your gift, and mustn't be denied any more than if 'twas shooting, or some other better inclination. Let us hear what you can do in that way; 'twill be a friendly ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... round under the Bay Eagle, "an' then Miss Cynthia looked up sharp at him like a catbird, an' she laughed, an' she said how that advice wasn't needed, because little boys always went home by ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... second class feed by preference on fruits, nuts, and grain. The bluebird, robin, wood thrush, mocking-bird, catbird, chickadee, cedar-bird, meadow lark, oriole, jay, crow, and woodpecker belong to this group. These birds never fail to perform a service for us by devouring ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett

... and least amiable of our indigenous plants; and then we got among scale-bark hickories, and there was one that had been fluted from top to bottom by a stroke of lightning; and here the little red squirrels were most unusually abundant and indignant; and there was a catbird that miauled exactly like a cat; and there was a spring among the roots of one great tree, and a broken teacup half buried in ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... cloudless sky, the streams were swollen and the road was heavy. The ponderous coach and the four black horses made slow progress. The creeping pace, the languid warmth of the afternoon, the scent of flowering trees, the ceaseless singing of redbird, catbird, robin, and thrush, made it drowsy in the forest. In the midst of an agreeable dissertation upon May Day sports of more ancient times the Colonel paused to smother a yawn; and when he had done with the clown, the piper, and the hobby-horse, he ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... he feels better acquainted with the catbird than he would have been if he had read fifty ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley

... south were soaring bubbles of exquisite green vapor dashed with amber and pink and red. Each morning the shade of the maple trees deepened, and on the lawn the dandelions opened, sowing with pieces of gold the velvet of the sward. The songs of the robin, the catbird and the thrush became more confident, more prolix until, at last, the drab and angular little village was transfigured into celestial beauty by the heavenly light and ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... associate except at the breeding season. While it prefers water-fowl, it does not confine itself to them. I shot one on a Long Island beach and found in its crop whole legs of the robin, Alice's thrush, catbird, and warblers. It measures about forty-five inches in the stretch of its wings, and its prevailing color ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... two ground-birds are seldom heard till toward the last of April. The ground-birds are all tree-singers or air-singers; they must have an elevated stage to speak from. Our long-tailed thrush, or thrasher, like its congeners the catbird and the mockingbird, delights in a high branch of some solitary tree, whence it will pour out its rich and intricate warble for an hour together. This bird is the great American chipper. There is no other bird that I know of that can chip with such emphasis and military decision ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... look for the brown thrasher, catbird, wren, barn, eave and tree swallows, martins, king birds and chipping sparrows. In May the principal birds of our neighbourhood will return—thrushes, vireos, tanagers, grosbeaks, bobolinks, orioles. The game ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... A catbird was singing in one of the silver poplars, and he waited, with upraised head, for the song to end. Then he stooped beside a column and carefully examined a newly planted coral honeysuckle before he went into the wide hall, where his wife ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... stream and clad in an Indian maiden's light garb, she was rejoicing in the summer heat. She enjoyed the sleepy feeling that dulled the woodland sights and sounds: the tapping of a woodpecker on a distant tree, the occasional call of a catbird, the soft scurrying of a rabbit or a squirrel, the buzzing of a laden bee—all mingled into one melody of summer of which she did not consciously distinguish the individual notes. Just as pleasantly confused were her thoughts, pictures of which her drowsiness blurred the outlines, so that ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson

... an article on the catbird several years ago in the Atlantic Monthly, and wanting to know more of the woman who had observed a pair of birds so closely, and could make so charming a story of their love-affairs and housekeeping experiences, and thinking that most persons ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn



Words linked to "Catbird" :   Chlamydera nuchalis, Dumetella, genus Dumetella, Ptilonorhynchidae, Ptilonorhynchus violaceus, great bowerbird, family Ptilonorhynchidae, oscine, satin bowerbird, oscine bird, satin bird



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