MORE ABOUT MOCKINGBIRDS - Part 2

Northern Mockingbird - photo courtesy Sharon Milligan

To read more articles, click on the blue title. This was published in June 1989

There's more to the Mockingbird that just another pretty voice. Few birds can juggle a relationship with man as well as a Mockingbird. The bird behind the voice is a lovable rascal who feigns aloofness from all men while taking complete possession of our property.

He'll charm and seduce us while he appropriates the yard and every vine, shrub and tree therein. We've been conned into believing that the Mockingbird is here in our yards through our indulgence. It is more likely the other way around... vaguely reminiscent of the dispute between the Arab and the camel.

The truth about who owns what becomes all too clear during the nesting season. Getting to the clothesline is like running a gauntlet, and we've put a moratorium on backyard barbeques until the mocker says it's okay.

He is a practitioner of psychological warfare;  The war of nerves goes on all summer. This feature Don Quixote jousts with anything that moves. But his arch enemy is the crow.. (aren't all crows guilty until proven innocent?) This constant harassment of crows is what we expect of the mocker. Guilt or innocence has nothing to do with it. It's the principle of the thing. The big black bird is the villain of the peace.. if he hasn't perpetrated his dirty deed yet, he plans to. And the summer sky is full of feisty little Mockingbirds in hot pursuit of crows.

For this we give our unabashed admiration, for who would deny that as a defender of home, family and property rights, the mocker is everyman's bird?

Such acts of derring-do only increase Mockingbird charisma. Here is a bird well able to take care of itself. Because he is so pugnacious, and doesn't wait for the gong to sound, the mocker has few natural enemies.

As if all that sound and fury really signified something, the jay defers to the Mockingbird and the crow never fights back. 

Old habits don't die easily, especially for a bird who spends so much time in the combat zone. When the nesting season is over, the bond between male and female is broken, or at least severely strained. Each must hold a winter territory, and a property settlement must be reached.

There's a queer little dance that accompanies this selection of boundary lines. Sometimes it's between male and female, or between two males. They face each other, a step or two apart, holding heads up and tails high. One darts forward, the other makes an orderly retreat of two or three steps. Or the movements may be side to side, one bird "leading",  the other "following". Through this waltz of Mockingbird protocol, territories are established without bloodletting.

As a rank and file bird lover I don't like to complain. There are enough grapes for him and the orioles too, but he never sees the virtue in sharing. With bold use of his white banners, he rudely disperses the gentle waxwings, and bedevils the finches out of sheer orneriness. On warm days he prances across the lawn, raising and lowering wings, fanning his tail ... tis said he is frightening insects into submission. I believe it.

My suspicions about the Mockingbirds were confirmed long ago. The bird has chutzpah. He takes outrageous liberties with our affections, and takes fullest advantage of what ever security life among humans offers him. But he doesn't really need us. He is merely using us.