Listen to the Mockingbird

Northern Mockingbird at Hagerman NWR, Photo by Bill Hurst

"If you’ve been hearing an endless string of 10 or 15 different birds singing outside your house, you might have a Northern Mockingbird in your yard. These slender-bodied gray birds apparently pour all their color into their personalities. They sing almost endlessly, even sometimes at night...(Cornell, All About Birds)

Noting that the mockingbird "... is found in all parts of the State, in winter and in summer, in the city and in the country, on the prairie and in the woods and hills ... is a singer of distinctive type, a fighter for the protection of his home, falling, if need be, in its defense, like any true Texan ...", the Texas legislature designated the mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) as official state bird in 1927.  The northern mockingbird is also the state bird of Florida, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi.

In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, where the mockingbird symbolizes innocence and goodness, Miss Maudie says

"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy.  They don't eat up people's garden, they don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. that's why it's a sin to kill a Mockingbird.

In Carl Sandburg's poem, Wilderness, we find this verse:

"There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird … and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want … and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.

A traditional southern lullaby begins:

"Hush, little Baby, don't say a word,
Mama's gonna buy you a Mockingbird.

And if that mockingbird don't sing,
Mama's gonna buy you a diamond ring.

Northern Mockingbirds have extraordinary vocal abilities; they can sing hundreds of songs, including the songs of other birds, insect and amphibian sounds, even an occasional mechanical noise.  You can check out the "music" on this video from Cornell.

Cornell gives these Cool Facts about the mockers' singing:

• It’s not just other mockingbirds that appreciate a good song. In the nineteenth century, people kept so many mockingbirds as cage birds that the birds nearly vanished from parts of the East Coast. People took nestlings out of nests or trapped adults and sold them in cities such as Philadelphia, St. Louis, and New York, where, in 1828, extraordinary singers could fetch as much as $50.
• Northern Mockingbirds continue to add new sounds to their repertoires throughout their lives. A male may learn around 200 songs throughout its life.
• Northern Mockingbirds sing all through the day, and often into the night. Most nocturnal singers are unmated males, which sing more than mated males during the day, too. Nighttime singing is more common during the full moon.
• Northern Mockingbirds typically sing from February through August, and again from September to early November. A male may have two distinct repertoires of songs: one for spring and another for fall.
• The female Northern Mockingbird sings too, although usually more quietly than the male does. She rarely sings in the summer, and usually only when the male is away from the territory. She sings more in the fall, perhaps to establish a winter territory.

So listen up!  Do you hear the mockingbird?