You’ll catch on, I’m sure, but there’s a whole lot of appropriating going on in this song. (A key to the musical quotations appears below the lyrics – should you miss one.) The ornithological lessons are absolutely true of male catbirds, it turns out.
© 2024 Steven E. Cutts
a Studio C recording, September 2024
The catbird is a pirate, a song-absconding thief;
you’re never sure what plunder will come twittering from his beak.
He borrows oh so liberally from this and that he’s heard;
he’s an equal opportunity appropriating bird.
He’ll sing, “Whoa, listen to my music. Whoa-oa-oa, listen to my music.”
“Listen to my catbird laugh; she can’t tell you why.
Deep within her heart, you see, she knows only crying.”
The catbird is a copycat, if you’ll excuse the pun,
but his growing repertoire has not been memorized for fun.
The catbird is a manly bird; he’s singing to the girls;
his mimicry entices like a gift of stolen pearls.
“Hello, catbirds; hello starlings; winter’s over; be my darling.”
“Catbird singing in the dead of night,
take these broken wings and learn to fly . . .
you were only waiting for this moment to arise.”
The catalog he’s mastered means he’s been hanging ‘round
season after season to accumulate these sounds.
He’s no fool: by broadcasting familiar melodies,
he’ll be filling up the gene pool; it’s the classic birds and bees.
“And the songbirds keep singing like they know the score,
And I love you, I love you, I love you like never before.”
“Catbird in a golden cage on a winter’s day in the rain . . .”
“When the red, red robin comes bob-bob-bobbing along.”
The catbird is a pirate, a song absconding thief,
just a catbird “sitting in the catbird seat.”
(If you want an answer key to the musical allusions – in order of appearance: The Doobie Brothers’s “Listen To The Music”; Stephen Stills’s/Buffalo Springfield’s “Bluebird”; Josh Ritter’s “Snow Is Gone”; McCartney’s “Blackbird”; Christine McVie’s “Songbird”; It’s A Beautiful Day’s “White Bird”; Harry Wood’s 1926 classic “When The Red, Red Robin”; plus Red Barber’s & James Thurber’s line: “sitting in the catbird seat”.)