By Peter Roos
If you’ve been hearing 10 or 15 different birds singing continuously outside your house, you likely have the state bird of Florida (and four other states), a Northern Mockingbird, in your yard. These slender-bodied gray birds pour all their color into their voices. They sing almost endlessly, even sometimes at night, and they flagrantly harass birds that intrude on their territories, flying slowly around them or prancing toward them, legs extended, flaunting their bright white wing patches.
The northern mockingbird is an omnivore, eating both insects and fruits. They are common in backyards all over the US and Mexico, but they don’t often visit feeders. You can encourage mockingbirds to visit your yard by keeping an open lawn,but providing fruiting trees or bushes, including mulberries, hawthorns, and blackberry brambles.
In the nineteenth century, people kept so many mockingbirds as cage birds that the birds nearly vanished from parts of the East Coast. People took nestlings out of nests or trapped adults and sold them in cities such as Philadelphia, St. Louis, and New York, where, in 1828, extraordinary singers could fetch as much as $50.
Northern Mockingbirds sing all through the day, and often into the night. Most nocturnal singers are unmated males, which sing more than mated males during the day, too. Nighttime singing is more common during the full moon.
Northern Mockingbirds typically sing from February through August, and again from September to early November. A male may have two distinct repertoires of songs: one for spring and another for fall.
The female Northern Mockingbird sings too, although usually more quietly than the male does. She rarely sings in the summer, and usually only when the male is away from the territory. She sings more in the fall, perhaps to establish a winter territory. The oldest on record was at least 14 years, 10 months old when it was found in Texas.