[Fictionary] the catbird seat

[eLLioTT morEton]

Hi, Pierre et al.,

For the last twenty-five years or so, I have kept a lookout for, but
never actually seen, a catbird in a dogwood.  The town where I live
has oodles of both, but they don't co-occur, at least, not when I'm
looking.

Regards,
Elliott

On Fri, 3 Jul 2026, Pierre Abbat wrote:

> "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.
>
>
>