[Fictionary] the catbird seat

[Pierre Abbat]

"Catbird seat" is a double stormy petrel. "Only a seat can be catbird, and the 
only thing you can do with the catbird seat is be sitting in it." (Where is 
petreleum jolly these days?) I recently found out what a literal catbird seat 
is.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/372869384
A few weeks ago, I observed a bird that turned out to be a catbird, sounding 
more like the mockingbird it is than a cat. I then looked up the phrase 
"catbird seat". There are three kinds of catbirds: the American catbirds, 
which are mockingbirds, the Australian and New Guinean catbirds, which are 
bowerbirds, and the Abyssinian catbird, which belongs to a family I don't know 
much about. The phrase comes from an Australian catbird. Many Australian 
catbirds don't build bowers even though they are bowerbirds, but the tooth-
billed catbird of east coast Queensland builds a bower around a tree. When he 
finds a female who likes his bower, she sits in the catbird seat.

I've also added one to my collection of descriptions of the empty set: the set 
of all catbirds who have ever eaten mousebirds. The only catbird that 
encounters mousebirds is the Abyssinian, but the Abyssinian catbird eats 
fruits and insects, not birds.

Pierre
-- 
The gostak pelled at the fostin lutt for darfs for her martle plave.
The darfs had smibbed, the lutt was thale, and the pilter had nothing snave.