MISSISSIPPI STATE BIRD - Part 1

Mockingbird - Photo courtesy Sharon Milligan

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It was well over 200 years ago that the great naturalist Mark Catesby discovered a gray-clad minstrel in what was then called the Carolinas. The bird sang an incredible variety of songs, with gusto, like a profundo at the Met.  Catesby was impressed.  He bestowed the name Mock-bird upon the singer.

We know Catesby's singer as the Mockingbird (Mimus polyglotos), the many-tongued mimic. I like to think of him as Mimus the magnificent, as befits his stature as our greatest bird-singer.

Carolinians have always taken a proprietory interest in Mockingbirds - it's hard to think of Charleston without the mind's eye association of magnolia blossoms and Mockingbirds.

But when John James Audubon found the bird in Louisiana, he implied in his writings that only among that state's giant Magnolias would the seeker be apt to find the singer. (Audubon was quite partisan in those days.)  Even after having encountered Mockingbirds in other states, Audubon was suspiciously reluctant to correct the record, and in fact, he never did.

Small wonder then that Southerners have long laid claim to the mocker as a strictly southern species (ignoring the evidence that it sings as well from a power line in Massachusetts and a fence post in Illinois) and that five southern states have exhalted the beloved Mockingbird to the ranks of officialdom as the state bird. One of those states is Mississippi.

No other bird has ever seriously challenged the Mockingbird's position as the king of singers. That most famous of Old World songsters, the Nightingale, while reigning as the undisputed king of song in Europe, was outclassed by the Mockingbird many years ago in Florida.

Edward Bok, who created the famous Singing Tower near Lake Wales, imported several Nightingales which were confined there in cages. Soon their singing filled the orange groves, and was rapidly adopted by the native Mockingbirds which broadcast the Nightingale song across the countryside. The story goes that the Nightingales were shamed into silence, for their perfection had indeed been improved upon.

Then there was the Bullfinch, a common European species, which, while confined since infancy in a cage, was taught to do a passable rendition of "God Save the King" at the whim of its owner. While striving to impress a visiting dignitary, the owner instructed the bullfinch to sing, which it did until midway through the second stanza, when it faltered.   With barely a pause, a canary which had been caged in the next room and had vicariously received the same voice lessons, took over and finished the tune.

Mimus the magnificent needs no lessons. He has only to hear a tune once, mocks it perfectly, and adds it to a repertoire which is said to include at least thirty other birds' songs, plus barking dogs, rusty hinges, roaring trains and various other of man's noisier inventions. Besides making use of all that plagiarized material, the Mockingbird has a rather splendid little song of its own.

Both male and female Mockingbirds sing outside of the breeding season when both are holding their own territories, but only the male sings of love, displaying his vocal attributes with unceasing ardor. In the language of birds, his springtime pronouncements signal that (1) he is a Mockingbird, (2) his is a particular Mockingbird, (3) his sex is male, (4) he is ready to mate, and (5) he is on his own territory.

He is, to say the least, persistent. There is doubt that he (or his captive human audience) ever sleeps. Shouts and threats go unheeded by the midnight Melchior, and we soon learn that it is futile to close the windows ... the barrage pours relentlessly down the chimney, or enters, like the wind, through the faults of the weatherstripping.

Mockers, like some other species, become so ecstatic in their vocal displays that they rise up on fluttering wings, high into the sky, never missing a note and the female, having no good reason to resist further, becomes his mate.

This article was published in June 1979. Part 2 next week