The Catbird Nest

This post is contributed by Barnaby Porter from his archives. Read the previous post here.
When I was growing up, we had in our yard a big patch of lilacs, white ones, that had grown about as big as lilacs get, and they spread out into rather a large thicket. Lilacs are friendly, and I spent a lot of time in there, messing around.
One spring, while building a hideout, I discovered a bird’s nest in this thicket. It was made of little sticks and didn’t look quite as comfortable as perhaps a nest ought to be. I soon met its builders, two plain grey birds with rusty patches under their long tails who called back and forth sounding like cats. They were catbirds.
This was a very big deal to me, sharing those lilacs with a pair of nesting birds whom I could visit every day. Amazingly, my disruptive antics didn’t cause the catbirds to abandon the thicket. They had their purpose for being there; I had mine. But I soon became more than a little curious about what was going on in that nest in the branches over my head.
A day or two after discovering it, I decided to investigate, which occasioned a major ruckus in the lilac patch. As the catbirds hopped from branch to branch, calling their “cat” calls to worry me away from their nest, I determinedly pulled on the stem that supported it, pulled it down, down, carefully, until I could peer inside. There were four blue-green eggs, perfect, warm to the touch, and I knew they contained the promise of new life. Each encapsuled a tiny creature who would soon be able to fly!
I was captivated by that thought.
Every day for the next few days, I pulled down the branch and looked at those eggs. At some point, it dawned on my juvenile mind that those unborn catbirds could easily become my pets. So, I stole the eggs amid a clamor of cat calls decrying my sinister thievery, and I took them to my room where I put them in a shoebox lined with dry grass and placed it under the warm glow of a light bulb.
With great optimism and high hopes, I ran up to my room every few hours to check on the catbird eggs, fully expecting each time to find four little catbirds cheeping to me for something to eat.
Meanwhile, out in the lilac bushes, the parent catbirds persisted in their occupation of the nest of twigs. My kidnapping of the eggs had not wholly discouraged them from their home-making enthusiasm, though I can’t imagine why. The quiet incubation of pale, blue-green eggs in near proximity to a hideout occupied by an 8-year-old boy was not a formula for natural harmony. I can only guess that it might have been our commonness of purpose in the arena of egg-hatching that somehow misled Mother Nature to arrive at the unsupportable notion that the beautiful example of her peaceful and patient catbirds in the lilacs would somehow rub off on me, and, if super-miracles were to be believed in, she could orchestrate the hatching of two clutches of eggs at the same time!
Well, it never happened. After what seemed an interminable stretch of days (and nights, staring impatiently at the glowing nest box across the room from my bed), I began to lose interest. There was a lot going on in my life.
Then one day, on one of my many visits to the lilac thicket, I was suddenly aware of new activity in the catbird nest. By careful inspection, I counted three little gaping mouths above the cupped rim of woven twigs.
How clearly I comprehended the situation, I don’t recall. The catbirds had succeeded in hatching their eggs despite me . . . I had failed miserably. But I did find myself thinking about the oft-uttered proverb about “a bird in the hand,” and I knew it was wrong and that even a catbird’s egg in the hand could never be the equivalent of a pair of cat birds in a lilac thicket.
Artist and author Barnaby Porter has had a varied career in marine research, aquaculture, and woodworking, among others. Most recently he partnered with his wife Susan as co-owners of the Maine Coast Book Shop & Cafe in downtown Damariscotta. In October 2021, Barnaby completed his tenure on Coastal Rivers’ Board of Trustees after six years of service.
Gray Catbird nest photo by Dennis Murphy.