Who are the greatest defenders of pokeweed and other native plants? Catbirds! What would the world be like if we all heeded their calls?
It is the time of the catbirds. Their insistent squawks brighten my days, emanating from every pokeweed patch. Anxieties about their future disrupt my nights: Will they find more pokeberries wherever they land next? Will there be enough other fall fruits—dogwoods, viburnums, beautyberries, spicebush and Virginia creeper—to sustain them on their long journeys?
When I awaken from fitful dreams, the catbirds are already swooping down low past the ash snag, where the pokeweed has found a home among surrounding brush piles. Their colorful calls, mixed with those of the scratchy-throated tufted titmice, provide an amusing and incongruous refrain to the increasingly muted soundscape. If the raucous Carolina wrens own the spring and summer, claiming every branch and bramble, it’s the catbirds who usher in fall with the same ambitious energy. Migrating by moonlight and refueling under the cool white autumn sun, they don’t seem to be the resting types.
You only have to hear a catbird once to understand why they’re named after our favorite felines. But whereas cats rely on unpleasant odors to mark their territories, catbirds use their voices to deliver urgent complaints that occasionally rise to a plaintive, fevered pitch. They are especially loud when they land in the pokeberries, issuing “keep out” proclamations to all others who might dare to enter. A few years ago, I even saw one seeming to yell at an Eastern tiger swallowtail nectaring on ironweed nearby, as if the florivorous butterfly was going to morph into a frugivore and steal the pokeberry stash.
In spring and summer, catbirds are the ultimate party DJs, spinning mashups of all the places they’ve been and the sounds they’ve heard—songs of other birds, calls of frogs, even machinery. But come September, they are all cat-call, much louder than their melodious cousins, the mockingbirds. Though mockingbirds are also stalwart defenders of bright purple pokeberries, they’re more furtive about their intentions, quietly chasing each other away from the pokeweed by the front window.
Even when we don’t see the catbirds, we hear them, and they leave their mark. Almost every day at this time of year, I find the evidence of their bacchanalian feasting: purple blobs on the edges of the birdbaths, which pool with hot-pink pokeberry juice diffused from their droppings. Who knew poop could be so pretty? Certainly earlier humans on these lands understood the powerful beauty of pokeberry juices, using them in dyes and later as inks. The plants were longtime partners with people, providing food, medicine and art supplies.
Pokeweed was also part of the diet of passenger pigeons, so much so that one of the plant’s other names is pigeonberry. Before hunting and habitat destruction erased passenger pigeons from existence by the early 1900s, so many millions flew overhead during migration that they darkened the skies. But what did they sound like when they touched down? How would passenger pigeons greet us if they were alive today and visiting our pokeweed patches? No known recordings of these lost voices exist, but written descriptions invoke a cheekiness similar to that of our catbird friends. Sources quoted on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology “Birds of the World” site note that the calls were “unlike the sound of any other pigeon, apparently used to get attention, like a ‘loud shout’”—and that their signature vocalization was a combination of “scolding, chattering, and clucking.”
I probably get a little loud, too, when defending pokeberries against those who would banish them from the landscape. These plants are not ours to remove; they belong to the earth and to themselves. They’re partners with the many birds who spread their seeds—catbirds, mockingbirds, brown thrashers, bluebirds, red-bellied woodpeckers, cardinals, and, as we saw here in Maryland early last year, a hungry painted bunting who’d flown far north of his usual range to hang out at Great Falls. Photos highlighting his beauty blew up the Internet. But most intriguing to me was that in almost every scene, the rainbow-colored celebrity was perching on pokeweeds or eating their dried berries.
What did the continent look like when painting buntings and other birds were joined by billions of passenger pigeons dispersing pokeberry seeds across the landscape? How much more food might have been available to catbirds, opossums, foxes, hummingbirds, raccoons, coyotes, leopard moth caterpillars, and deer, who find pokeweed especially delicious? Though animals now forage on some nonnative shrubs as well, they’re not necessarily getting what they need. Higher nutritional content found in the fruits of many indigenous plants is especially important at a time when birds need extra energy; one study found that migrating catbirds eating invasives had lower body mass and poorer immune status than their counterparts who stopped in habitats filled with natives.
In celebration of my birthday, rather than ask people to swing into action and donate to a cause, I’m asking for inaction: a cessation of the needless interference of so many plants’ and animals’ lives. Leave the pokeweed and Virginia creeper for the migrating birds. Leave the leaves for the overwintering fireflies and butterflies. Stop cutting down trees where the woodpeckers roost in holes to escape the cold. Stop making noise that hurts all of our ears. Listen to the wind pass through the exposed branches. Hear the leaves flutter to the ground. Consider what it would be like to be a catbird, searching from memory for a pokeweed that is no longer there, and give him something to defend once again.
[Photos by Nancy Lawson]
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Wonderful piece, thank you!
Thank you! And thanks for reading. <3
Ah, yes! Happy Birthday, Nancy. May your wish come true.
Hi Marney! Thank you! Yes, wouldn’t that be great?
Happy birthday, Nancy, and I loved this post. I’m with you. I love seeing the Catbirds in the Pokeweed by the window, and I am forever defending its virtues.
Thank you, Hilary! <3 Pokeweed-by-the-window is the best bird watching, isn't it? This weekend we saw six robins at once there.
A beautiful and poignant piece. Though I have a small, city yard, I have all the native plants you noted, though I don’t have a pokeberry patch. A dozen or so plants, popped up, here and there this year, I suspect, ‘planted’ by the birds themselves! I’m delighted to have them for the birds and the bees (who love the little flowers).
Thanks, Christine! <3 It's amazing to see who comes to visit even in a small lot -- or maybe especially in a small city lot because it's such an oasis!
Tank you so much for this beautiful, intelligent, work. It touched me so deeply. And filled me with gratitude connecting to the very spirit behind your words. Your catbird word- songs filling me and drawing me in.
Thank you so much for reading it and taking the time to tell me this, Tim. That’s how I feel too when I am among the catbirds – so grateful to share space and time with these amazing beings. <3
Birds and berries.
Beautifully stated, and beautiful wish. Thank you, I’ll be sharing it.
Hi Mary, thank you! <3
Happy birthday, Nancy. I share your love of catbirds. Thanks for the lovely ode to catbirds, wildlife, and the plants like pokeweed that feed them.
Hi Susan! Thank you so much. <3 I hope your days are filled with their mischief too!
I have a recent trail cam video of a Gray Fox dining on Pokeberries here in my yard in NE Oklahoma.
Oh, that’s really neat! I see the evidence of so much mammal nibbling but rarely catch them in the act. You make me think we should point our trail cam at the pokeweed patch tonight!
Here in Ormond Beach, Florida, we have Poke and Beauty berries a-plenty waiting for your Catbirds and other fall migrants. The welcome mat is out, the banquet is spread!
Thank you for that reassurance! <3 I love the idea of "my" catbirds heading down to your banquet. Maybe that is what they are squawking to each other about -- come on we have to go; we can't be late!
I have one third acre planted with native vegetation…catbirds all summer long. Love them!
Why leave when you have everything you need, right? 🙂
What you call inaction I term benign neglect. I am fortunate to have seven ac. in what was once country but now surrounded by subdivisions. Pokeweed is present and tons of Virginia Creeper. Many years of allowing nature to persist has yielded other lovely natives, including a few pink lady slippers. Yes, I battle Liriope and periwinkle, too, but keeping an eye out for emerging natives is the best thing I have done in my last 20 years. Thanks for your posts and lovely photos that encourage us to think about nature as we use the land.
Hi Lynda, wow! What a wonderful treasure to have lady slippers coming up on their own. It’s just the best when these plants find their own spots to thrive. <3
I loved this essay! I am always asking my husband to leave the pokeweed alone and to not rake the leaves! He’s slowly coming around!
I have had real arguments over the pokeweed!
Although I consider all my yard my nature center, the back yard I labeled My Natural Area.
There nothing gets touched. I have a few spots of pokeweed and I leave the leaves on the ground. I garden with natives mostly.
Thank you, Beatrice! That’s great that your husband is coming around. <3 Sometimes the transition phase is the hardest, when the plants are in their teenage years and people don't know what's coming. I love your new names for your land.
Well said, Happy birthday! ☀🐦
Thank you! <3
What a nice article! I rarely get to see or hear a catbird but I am pleased when I do. The pictures are very nice and the last paragraph is such good advice.
Thank you!
Thank you, William! I’m so happy you enjoyed it and could get more of your fill of catbirds from the pictures! <3
Thank you for this lovely post. It made my morning. I love great nature writing — you are so talented. I am a fan and defender of poke weed myself. Of course it never quite grows where I want it to, but we are working on an “understanding”.
Thank you so much, Neil! Your comment made my day too. <3 And I love that you are collaborating with your pokeweed to come to mutual agreement. A couple of ears ago I transplanted two babies -- I think they were in a path -- and I thought they had died, but this year they were back!
Thank you for such beautiful writing. Your birthday wish is mine too.
Thank you for reading! <3
Belated Happy Birthday, Nancy! I hope this year will be one of the best for you: good health, joyous surprises, and interesting challenges. And I hope you truly, deeply know that you have set a lofty example for so many of us to follow, you’ve shared so much useful knowledge, and you’ve provided inspiration to get out there to create, maintain, and expand habitats. Good work, girl –thank you!
Thank you for sharing your keen insight and soul-stirring experiences on these two favorite inhabitants of my backyard habitat.
Thank you for reading, Stacey, and for loving our little catbirds so much too!! <3
Happy birthday, belated by one day. Glad to have found this article, as I’ve been arguing with my husband on whether to pull or keep a bunch of pokeweed that popped up in our backyard. Your article bolsters my position that we should keep it. I thank you and the many catbirds who visit us will certainly also thank you! (We also suddenly have a lot of snakeroot. Is that also a plant you recommend keeping?)