To Hear a Mockingbird

The other morning I awoke to someone calling cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, outside our bedroom window. My husband and I looked at each other and started laughing uncontrollably. It was our neighborhood mockingbird and I swear, it was a distinct “cheeseburger” that was being sung. I don’t know how many of you have been around mockingbirds, but everyplace I have lived, I seem to have one close by. I feel that they are my “totem” bird. There are mockingbirds outside of my office yurt at the farm and I love the way they just chatter on during the day. Some folks might say they are the ornithological version of multiple personality disorder, but I prefer to think of them as merely multi-lingual, with just too many songs out there to sing, so why settle on just one. The Northern Mockingbird, Mimus polyglottos (many-tongued mimic) is, from what I understand, one of two song birds that will continue to sing into the night (the other being the Nightingale). Their nighttime singing is also more common during full moon. A male mockingbird may learn around 200 songs though out its life. Researchers have also found that a bird may have two distinct repertoires, one for the spring and one for the fall.

Ornithological writer Edward H. Forbush (1929), gives the mockingbird one of the finest of tributes when he says that “the Mockingbird stands unrivaled. He is the king of song. . . . He equals and even excels the whole feathered choir. He improves upon most of the notes that he reproduces, adding also to his varied repertoire the crowing of chanticleer, and cackling of the hen, the barking of the house dog, the squeaking of the unoiled wheelbarrow, the postman’s whistle. . . . He even imitates man’s musical inventions.”

I love them for their determined defense of their young, often dive-bombing neighbors’ cats or dogs or even neighbors themselves, who come too close to their precious babies. I also appreciate their independence for I can’t entice them into my backyard with promises of full birdseed feeders or fresh water birdbaths , nope… their preference is a newly mown field or freshly cut lawn, perched atop a fence post or roof top, singing to their hearts content. I can’t help but admire their commitment and boldness and must admit that there is a part of me that would love to sing with such lack of inhibition.

In perhaps my all time favorite book, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee Harper puts it simply:
“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. ”