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Converted from paper version of the Broad Ripple Gazette (v08n08)
Right in my Own Backyard - The Backyard Crooner - by Brandt Carter
posted: Apr. 15, 2011

Right in my Own Backyard header

The Backyard Crooner
During these early, warmer spring days when you open your windows, put screens in place and enjoy a gentle breeze lulling you to sleep, you may be awakened by nocturnal bird songs. If you happen to hear what seems to be a symphony of birds, you may have a Northern Mockingbird within earshot.
I relish people's bird stories. While waiting for a business meeting to begin not long ago, a woman had one for me. She proceeded to tell me that one spring night with windows open, she heard the song of a cardinal, a chicken, and a duck. The sounds came again-a cardinal, a chicken, and a duck. Trying to figure out what was happening, she finally identified the mystery songs. It was in fact just one singer. It was a Northern Mockingbird.
Of course, we all know imitating is the same as mocking, and these aptly named birds are the best impersonators in the backyard. Often mockingbirds will learn more than 200 songs in their life span. They tend to sing all night long, especially during full moons. The bachelor male sings more frantically from February though August and again in September to early November. The male may have special repertoires for spring and others for fall.

Some curiosities about mockingbirds:
  • This is the state bird of Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas.
  • The lullaby "Hush Little Baby" reminds us that mockingbirds were was once popular as pets:
    • 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.
  • President Thomas Jefferson had a pet mockingbird named Dick.
  • Mimus Polyglottos (the Latin name of this bird) is the name of the wooden bird on a stick for King Friday XIII on the television show Mister Rogers Neighborhood.
  • In the book To Kill a Mockingbird, the bird is the symbol of innocence and generosity.

Mockingbirds' primary diet consists of insects (beetles, ants, grasshoppers, and spiders), berries, and seeds. Mockingbirds will not typically visit your seed feeders; however, you can attract them to your backyard by offering apples or pomegranates, chopped dried fruit, grapes or raisin-filled suet. To further entice these birds, provide drinking water and plant berry bushes such as holly, mulberries, raspberries, Virginia creeper, blackberries, dogwood, elderberries, hackberry, pyracantha, and grapes. A white patch on each wing, often visible on perched birds, becomes a large white flash in flight. This is the identifier that distinguishes mockingbirds from other gray birds
Get to know the Northern Mockingbird. It is quite an interesting visitor, and if you hear repetitive songs that seem to go on forever, remember a point in the book To Kill a Mockingbird that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird because "they don't do one thing for us 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."



Brandt Carter, artist, herbalist, and naturalist, owns Backyard Birds at 2374 E. 54th Street. Visit her web site www.feedbackyardbirds.com. Email your bird questions to Brandt@BroadRippleGazette.com




brandt@broadripplegazette.com
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