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Northern Mockingbird
The other day I saw an unusual thing. I was driving down RegentsPark lane. You have to drive so slow on RegentsPark you could practically write a dissertation between stop signs. Anyway, I saw up ahead, in the air, a large bird being swarmed by a bunch of smaller birds. At first I thought it was a hawk and some crows. Then when I saw that the smaller birds were not crows, but Mockingbirds, I thought maybe it was Mockingbirds and a crow. As I got closer I realized that it was neither of those combinations. It was Mockingbirds and a hawk.
I have watched crows harass hawks all my life, and even got to see that drama recently in my own cul-de-sac. But in all that time I’ve never seen a crow actually make contact with the hawk. This time was different. Just as I approached this drama above me on RegentsPark lane, one of the Mockingbirds flew right down and clawed or pecked the hawk on the back of the head. The hawk’s body language was similar to what I would call wincing in humans. He jerked his head back almost standing upright in mid air, paused, and then really put on the gas. He wanted nothing more to do with those Mockingbirds.
All this brought back many wonderful memories of this common and perhaps my favorite bird.
When I was a kid in Columbia, well, our area was very wooded with pine trees and dogwoods and other under story trees and large hedges. Mockingbirds abounded. So did cats. Every year baby or juvenile Mockingbirds would end up on the ground. You could hear the squawking before you even knew what was going on. We used to love to watch our cats get dive bombed. Often they would just give up, and if not we’d intervene for the little bird. On many occasions I myself got pecked on the head, and it hurts! No wonder that hawk winced.
Cats and Mockingbirds seem to be caught up in a life long battle, like hyenas and lions. Just a month or two ago, my inside cat Socks was sitting on the bed looking out the window. His tail was flapping and you could tell he was excited. So I lay down next to him, my head next to his, and I watched too. A mocking bird was jumping around in our holly bush picking the last of the berries from last fall’s crop.
(An aside…Socks looked over at me, like “why are you here.” But I looked at him and then the bird, and it was like he understood. We were watching the bird, him and me. I think he liked it that we were doing this together – just two guys hanging out. It was cool.)
There are two things about Northern Mockingbirds I love the most – their coloration and their singing.
Just standing there a Mockingbird is a rather non descript gray looking bird, with darker tail and wing ends, of about average songbird size. But all these years of watching mocking birds I am still filled with joy every time I see one fly, those white tail ends and white wing patches displaying every wing beat. Why it is so pleasing I cannot exactly say, but it is one of the most beautiful things in the world to me.
And then there is their singing. I am grateful that every year we have had Mockingbirds live in our little patch of suburbs. They love to sit on the point of our roof, or at the very top of the hemlock, or sometimes on the old antennae, and just sing away. You can almost always tell when it’s a Mockingbird singing because the song varies so much. They don’t call it a “mocking” bird for nothing! It can copy the songs of 20 or 30 other species of birds, and it can copy non-bird sounds too. There may be those who doubt this, but I used to sit out and make a particular whistle sound over and over and over, for days, or weeks, off and on. Yes, the Mockingbird would pick up on that sound and add it to its repertoire. They can even imitate dog barks, squirrel screeches, and repetitive machine sounds.
They aren’t fooling anybody of course, especially other birds, so it’s not a mimicry that scares away predators, or draws in prey. I’m sure that the experts would say that it is a mating thing. I rather like to believe that they just enjoy doing it, well, because they can. OK, the experts are probably right, but maybe I’m right too. Maybe both are true.
Very little in life brings as much pleasure as just sitting outside in a decent chair watching and listening to birds, and Mockingbirds make that all the more joyful for me. They tend to vocalize most in the late afternoons or early mornings. Sit out one day and see how many calls a Mockingbird is making. You might even be able to tell which bird it is mimicking – that is very cool!
We are fortunate here as well that many Mockingbirds over winter here. They love berries in the winter when the bugs have declined, and holly is a favorite. If you’re ever thinking of planting some shrub, plant a holly, the red berry producing kind, just for the Mockingbirds. You’ll be doing them a favor and giving yourself a winter’s worth of enjoyment watching them.
If you want to see pictures of Mockingbirds, and here their vocalizations, head to the Cornel Labs site, here, or here.
There is a lovely picture of a Northern Mockingbird at the Piedmont Bird Club site, here.
Joel Gillespie, copyright @ 2006
PS – don’t you just wish they were called Southern Mockingbirds? |
