WENDY WEIGER

Death of a Catbird

A bird in flight has struck a window of my old house in northern Maine. It's a bright May morning. I get up and walk in the general direction of the sound, glance through unyielding glass, and hope the screen shielded the bird from serious injury. Wishful thinking; I don’t want to be distracted from my email inbox by thoughts of mortality. There have been too many deaths in my circles of friends and family. I don’t need another reminder of the fragility of life.

Later, I head outside for some overdue yard work. That’s when I find the body, lying in the grass below a different, screenless window. A jaunty black cap, smooth gray back and wings, a subtle touch of rusty orange beneath a long black tail. A catbird. A pair has frequented the densely tangled woods adjoining my yard for the past few summers. I’ve never seen their nest or young; catbirds conceal their domestic lives from the eyes of hungry predators. But their visits to my suet feeder have brought moments of joy to harried days, and I’ve learned to listen for the mewing calls from which they get their name.

The catbirds’ choice of residence is no coincidence. They thrive in forest edge habitats created by development. By maintaining feeders, I’ve invited them to visit my home. Though evolution has prepared them to avoid natural dangers, they are ill-adapted to hazards posed by human structures. And this morning, winging through sunlit air in the exuberance of breeding season, one met a sudden end, colliding with a menace it could not see.

I pick up the body, carry it into the woods, set it down gently, and pillow its head on a flat stone. I’m trying to be respectful, though I know my action means nothing to the bird or its kin, and a feral cat or wandering fox may disturb its repose. A better way to honor the bird’s passing would be to install screens on every window. But the latter response would require time and money, both of which are in short supply. So I opt for the quick and easy sentimental gesture instead.

My thoughts drift back to a happier catbird encounter. I was visiting the Maine coast for the summer solstice. I awakened early to watch the sunrise. At 4 AM, walking down a quiet road, I passed a catbird singing on a tree branch in the predawn darkness. Three hours later, on my way back, he was still there, emphatically proclaiming his territory. Catbirds belong to the family Mimidae, the mimics. This one sounded like a contentious gathering of species, arguing in a loud, fast jumble. I heard the chickadee’s fee-bee, albeit somewhat off-key; the blue jay’s queedle; the guttural grate of the common grackle. The song conveyed an enviable energy and vitality.

Even the strongest vitality is tenuous. None of us is ever sure we have five more minutes to live. I’m sorry I never got to hear the dead bird’s song.

I put the accident out of my mind and return to my to-do list. But over the next few days, a sequel plays out at my backyard feeding station. Another catbird—I presume it’s the mate of the one who died—perches intermittently atop the central pole. Its persistent mews pierce my bubble of self-absorption.

It’s impossible to know the inner lives of other species. Anthropomorphism inevitably creeps into our interpretations. That being said, in avian brains, there are homologues to the regions that generate emotion in human brains. It’s reasonable to believe we share some common inner ground.

Reasonable or not, I can’t help feeling empathy for the bereaved bird. I think back to a holiday season in the days before cell phones. I was still feeling raw from the premature death of my father when my usually-punctual mother, traveling by car, failed to appear on schedule. After a couple of anxious hours, I was contemplating calling police and hospitals when she came in the door. For this catbird, there is no one to ask for help, nowhere to file a report of a missing spouse. So the bird waits in a spot where they both fed, mewing in the vain hope of attracting its absent mate.

I wonder if I should have laid the body on my deck, in view of the feeders. Would the surviving bird have recognized its partner? The idea of putting the dead bird on display strikes me as morbid. But there would have been no other way for me to communicate the news. By now, it’s too late. Even if the body remains in the spot where I left it, decay has undoubtedly set in.

The unanswerable questions voiced in the mews of the solitary catbird haunt me. Where are you, what happened, will you come back? They make me appreciate my gift of human language and the social support my words elicit.

And then the waiting bird is gone. Did it move on to search for another mate? Did it, in its preoccupation, fall prey to a prowling feline? I’ll never know. I feel relieved that, this early in the breeding season, there are no orphaned young starving in the nest, compounding the loss. I do not see or hear another catbird all summer.

Wendy Weiger is an MD/PhD who left Boston’s halls of academe for the wilds of Maine’s North Woods. She recently founded Achor Earth Ways:  a nonprofit whose programs guide people into deeper, more joyful connection with nature.  She believes that rekindling our intimacy with the natural world will renew our own health on multiple levels—physical, emotional, spiritual—and will inspire us to work toward healing the Earth. Her nonfiction has appeared in Down East Magazine, CoveyClub, Newsweek, and A Dangerous New World: Maine Voices on the Climate Crisis.