To Maim a Mockingbird

It was hard enuff taking you seriously as a soccer cartoon. Now that youre a cartoon rabbit, oy.

Today as i was returning home, a mockinbird was sitting on the weathervane which is actually on of the lightning rods on the chimney in front . He was sitting up there screaming his head off .

Mocking birds eat insects neh? I never see em at the bird feeders . And they dont seem too socially inclined except with other mocking birds.

We have a fairly big property and I only see one pair and these are around the house and barn area. MAybe you only get one because they are so territorial. Thats real good especially with their repertoire of animal calls. Ours even do a fairly good imitation of a lambs bleat. (weve got plenty of them at this time of year)

While we wait for more mockingbird stories .... (more please, more! )

I hope you don't mind if I post this incredible copy-cat sound-making bird from SE Oz.
The fabulous lyrebird.
This one perfectly mimics the sound of kookaburras, chainsaws & camera clicks. And god knows what else!
This terrific lyrebird performance was captured by David Attenborough, from the BBC. (I think this clip might have been posted elsewhere on A2K in the past, but never mind. It's well worth a second look!)
Don't you just love it when he creeps around the undergrowth, whispering to us, so reverently, about the creature/s he's filming?

Well, we may be spared. Yesterday morning when i let the little dogs out, i could hear the bird, but it was farther away. Maybe it decided that our evergreen would not be a good place to nest because of the little dogs. This morning, i didn't hear it at all.

or maybe he moved on because he wasn't having any luck with the wimminses...

Good point, i only heard the one bird. Someone mentioned woodpeckers earlier in the thread--this morning (about 15 minutes ago) i heard a woodpecker. I've heard lots of woodpeckers in my life, but never in this city.

Hmmmmm . . . cue the Twilight Zone theme music, this thread is bizzare . . .

We had woodpeckers in the great willow at the edge of the retainer pond. They were all over that tree for a season or two. The owners blamed them for damaging the tree, but, as was pointed out to me, the tree already was riddled with destructive bugs before they arrived. They put holes everywhere and then left. Only about half of the limbs appeared to have any life. Then, our new lead maintenance man cut off the sprinklers for an overly long time and the tree succumbed to the chronic drought we've been experiencing. Haven't seen a woodpecker about the property since.

MsO, I did a research paper on lyre birds when I was in elementary school!

I heard the blinking thing while I was waiting for the bus. It's close all right.

what we have is 1,867,026 morning doves that sit on our roof beside the air vent "cooing" from pre-dawn to late evening. once in awhile, the red-tailed hawks come by and the "cooing" stops for a few hours.

Sounds like you can count your blessings that there's only one in your neighbourhood, ehBeth! (by the sounds of it.)
The folk with lots of them around their area must be driven nuts.

Some of us have roadrunners and quail..

I had chickons, in another century.

meep meep

Does that mean something in Austrailian ?

We get these on the Tv antena. These guys I dont mind so much

Thank u. I 'm a pro-bird person.





David

Speaking of kookburras, every child in an Australian primary school used to learn & sing this song in class.
I originally thought this video, was from an Oz state school. But no, Pickerington is apparently in Ohio!
Funny, the kids look & sound exactly the same.

OK, back to mockingbirds after that interlude, I guess...

We've sort of veered off in the direction of noisy birds, whatever & wherever they might be.

I just had a thought ...
About littlek's mockingbird problem ...

As mockingbirds are so attuned to sound, is there some sound they really, really hate?

Perhaps you could record it & play it loudly when they're trying to sleep?
Tit for tat.

Don't know, but if you guess wrong you will be sorry. Very sorry.