For Whom the Bird Screeches

The grey catbird is back, he's pissed, and he's not gonna take it anymore.
At least, that's how it feels. 

attribution below

The bugger screeches outside our window from early morning into the late evening. You'd think by now he would have worn out his vocal cords, but alas, he carries on and on, first in the backyard, then in the front yard.

He's positively relentless. This is the second year in a row that he's made an appearance. He doesn't seem to torment the neighbors, so why us?

Admittedly, things heat up when the cat sits in the window, but even when the noise gets to her and she slinks away, the racket goes on. 

I went to my friend, the Google, to try and determine why. The upshot is, the male yells loudly to claim his territory. He will call out if you approach the nest, but it's supposed to be a softer call. And then the female calls back.

This morning, I noticed that when he took up the racket in the backyard, it was answered by a sort of cooing sound that came from the bushes by the fence. I have this handy-dandy app on my phone called "Merlin" that identifies bird song, and sure enough, it informed me that it was indeed the female catbird answering.

The upshot is, there's a nest in the bushes in the backyard, and we're stuck with the screeching until the little ones head off to university (or wherever baby catbirds go when they leave home).

While I love having the windows open, it's getting pretty old. 

It's supposed to be hot this week, so I guess we'll have a good excuse to turn on the AC. With the windows shut, maybe peace will be restored. 

I'm hoping for rain, too, to wash the windows on the car.

Squawking isn't the only annoying thing about the resident catbird.

Photo credit: Peterwchen, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons