“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing 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. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
-Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
A steady series of songs – regular and loud. Sweet melodies saturate the air like suspended sugar in a cold glass of southern iced tea. Hey, wait! Don’t change the song! As soon as you seem to get the rhythm, it switches up on you, and the small jukebox perched atop the tree in view is already on to the next track in its catalog of greatest hits. With showmanship and a repertoire to rival Willie Nelson himself, the Northern Mockingbird – confident and boisterous – puts on the state’s most enduring concert for an often-inattentive audience of evening dog walkers, morning joggers, native wildlife, and suburban residents.
A common backyard bird, the Northern Mockingbird (its stage name, if you will) receives its scientific name Mimus polyglottus from the Greek mimus, meaning ‘imitator’, and polyglottus, meaning ‘many-tongued, multilingual’, for its characteristic vocal behaviors. From February through early November, Northern Mockingbirds across the continental United States and Mexico can be found singing from the top of trees, utility poles, and chimneys with their long tails cocked upward and repeating a phrase 4-7 times before switching to the next set of notes. Mimicking the songs and calls of several bird species, as well as other animals and car alarms, it is estimated that an adult male Northern Mockingbird may learn up to 200 different songs throughout its lifetime. In the nineteenth century, people’s fascination with the bird and the songs it produces led to its near disappearance in pars of the east coast, as they were trapped or removed from nests and then sold in cities as caged birds.
Northern Mockingbird
With a bite to match its bark, Northern Mockingbirds are fiercely territorial. Females regularly ward off other female mockingbirds, and males challenge male intruders. When disputing territory, males fly toward one another, land near the boundary, and face off by silently hopping from one side to another. If neither bird retreats, they may fight each other, grappling with wings and claws and pecking at each other. They are also territorial around other bird species such as hawks, as well as squirrels, cats, and even humans. A team of researchers in 2009 found that Northern Mockingbirds were able to recognize an individual human who had previously threatened the birds’ nesting site, while ignoring other individuals. Mockingbirds are socially monogamous, and both males and females construct the nest with males preparing the twig foundation and females making most of the lining.
Northern Mockingbird populations have cumulatively declined by approximately 30% from 1966 to 2019, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey.
Compiled by Alexandre Lemaire. Photos courtesy of Alexandre Lemaire.
Sources include All About Birds, National Audubon, and a research article.
