FOCUS ON NATURE

FOCUS NATURE LISTEN TO THE MOCKINGBIRD TEXT BY JOSEPH STOCKER

What you see is not a particularly pretty bird, about the size of a robin. It's drab and gray (its coloring, one keeneyed bird-watcher was heard to murmur, "is rather like the inside of a shoe box"). It has white wing and tail markings. Altogether rather prosaic looking as birds go.

But what you hear is sheer magic. Here is a consummate, exuberant singer belting out songs in the multiple voices of the bird world. It's the master of all mimics; its incredible repertoire extends through the songs or calls of scores of other birds. It's also your not-so-fine-feathered-friend that keeps you awake in the middle of the night, trilling its vast range of borrowed melodies from the top of a telephone pole at your curb.

I give you the mockingbird - although you may not really want it at 3 o'clock in the morning.

The mocker is not, of course, exclusive to Arizona. It's found just about everywhere. It's a symbol, verily, of the Deep South: five Southern states have made it their official state bird. But it shows up everywhere, save the far northwest and Alaska. It's even in Hawaii, transplanted from California. And of late, the mocker has been, rather amazingly, extending its range into southern Canada and the Maritime provinces. The explanation seems to be a gradually warming climate, the planting in northern communities of berry-bearing bushes that provide winter feed, and, just basically, the gutty, venturesome character of the mockingbird.

In Arizona it pretty well eschews the chilly high country, preferring just about anywhere south of that. "You'll find it in the oaks and chaparral but below the pine forest," says Dr. Glenn Walsberg, professor of zoology at Arizona State University. Out in the desert, the mocker lives mainly in sage and prickly pear and cholla cacti. It also fancies the berries of mistletoe that grow plentifully in the mesquite.

But it's really, at heart, a city slicker. It likes or leastwise doesn't mind people. Mockers come into town, says Dr. Stephen M. Russell, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, "because they find the right combination of shrubbery and food the year around. They're somewhat on the omnivorous side. They eat insects, and there are lots of ornamental shrubs that produce the kind of fruit they like pyracantha, for example." Dr. Russell notes that half a dozen mockingbirds regularly inhabit the mile-and-a-half route he walks from home to the university.And what virtuosi, these mockers! They sing the songs of jays and sparrows and wrens and mourning doves and whippoorwills and whatever other skyborne creature they happen to hear. They repeat each one four or five or six times before moving on to the next. At an arboretum in Boston, a mockingbird was heard to perform (and someone actually counted 'em) 87 different tunes within a span of seven minutes. Another at the same arboretum gave out with 39 individual birdsongs and 50 birdcalls. How accurately? Two researchers in Ohio found that only With an electronic analysis device called an audiospectrograph could they tell the difference between the mocker's imitations and the real thing.But the mockingbird is, in the words of Virginia writer-naturalist Dr. J. J. Murray, "no mere plagiarist." Amongst the songs of others, it threads its own and, as well, whatever miscellaneous sounds that chance to fall upon its ears and pique its imagination. It is, says Dr. Murray, "a brilliant improviser that weaves these other noises into its own symphony."

"These other noises" may emanate from a gate's rusty hinge, a creaky patio rocking chair, a car's squeaky brakes, a man whistling for his dog, the barking dog, tree frogs, squirrels, the clatter of wind chimes, the whir of a power saw whatever. Mockers have even been heard to imitate the feeble peepings of their own offspring.And talk about endurance! The bird can go on for six to eight hours. It's at night, in mating season, inspired by a full moon (or a reasonable facsimile, such as a street light), that the mocker is at its best or worst, depending on one's perception of that kind of nocturnal racket. This one-man band of the cactus desert, forest, and suburban gardens is singing its "advertising song" announcing its virility and inviting some nubile lady mocker to raise a family.

As it sings with its characteristic passion, the mocker is usually high up somewhere, on a lamppost, in a tree, on a television antenna, or a chimney. Often, and especially if it spots a female nearby, it flaps and flutters, leaps into the air, turns flip-flops, falls to the ground, and flies back up again. "The mockingbird," quoth an inveterate birder, "is ebullience. The joy of singing carries it off its feet, literally." Recounts ornithologist Alden H. Miller in the National Geographic book Song and Garden Birds of North America: "I have seen a mocker vault 3 to 10 feet in the air without a break in voice; its white-marked wings and outspread tail suggesting the turning of cartwheels."

Yes, well, the problem is, though, that this bouncy sweetsinging poet of the treetops is at one and the same time a holy terror. It's extremely territorial. It's just liable to declare war on anything and anybody that it perceives as a threat to itself, its mate, and their mockingbirdlings.

Adult male mockers have been known to take on robins, jays, flickers, small owls, hawks, cats, dogs, tractors, wheelbarrows and, yes, other adult male mockers. Put a mirror out where a mockingbird might see it (and see in it a rival), and it's just liable to attack the mirror, and, maybe, knock itself out in the process. Ditto shiny hubcaps. When two mockingbirds fight, they go into a strange dance, squaring off like a couple of pugilists, hopping sideways, heads cocked, bills lifted defiantly, wings arched.

They'll also dive-bomb people and occasionally attack larger animals. Says Arizona State University's Glenn Walsberg: "I've seen a mockingbird charge a mountain lion. I was watching one beating up on something. I put the glasses on them and saw the mocker going after the lion as it was walking down a creek bank."

However, the poor creature that suffers most at the hands or beak of the truculent mockingbird is the cat. "If they have a nest with young, they'll attack any cats that come near," says Grace Gregg, who once ran a bird-watchers' network called Bird Alert for the Pima County Audubon Society. "I've seen great big Persian cats terrified by mockingbirds constantly pecking at them."

Still, this slightly aberrant if understandable behavior on the part of the mockingbird doesn't detract from its generally lovable nature.

I remember a scene from the movie The Trip to Bountiful. Mother Watts had gone, in defiance of her disapproving family, to visit her hometown, Bountiful, Utah, a last time before she died. The sheriff was asked to pick her up, and he did, and they're sitting on the porch of the dilapidated old house she used to live in. They hear a mockingbird. Mother Watts says, "I think the mockingbird is my favorite bird of all." And the sheriff says, "Mine, too." And I must add: mine as well.