When I’m working, I sit right next to a window with a view of the backyard, including my henhouse. The hens are amusing in their own right, but today, it’s wild birds who are hampering my productivity.
If I were a better photographer, I could show you a picture of two mockingbirds engaged in a skreeeeing chase through the foliage, but instead, here’s one coming in for a landing on the henhouse:
It looks dark, but that’s just the shadows plus my deficiencies as a photographer and the fact that I’m using a phone to take the shot. It’s definitely a mockingbird. And here’s a mama cardinal playing spectator at that same spot moments later:
I’m not sure what her role is in the mockingbird dust-up, if any. It doesn’t seem to take much to set mockingbirds off.
When I was a kid, I watched a pair of them dive and swoop on our poor old fat black-and-white cat, Mr. Mitten, causing him to cower under the car until they finally lost interest. Mockingbirds are the Irish of the avian world.
Please feel free to discuss birds, ethnic stereotypes or whatever else interests you today.
Cassidy
Any people here living in Omaha?
Roger Moore
What does that make hummingbirds? I’ve seen them give hawks a hard time.
catclub
@Roger Moore: Duchy of Grand Fenwickians
MikeJ
@Cassidy: You call that living?
shelly
Up north, it’s the Catbirds who are the road-ragers of the avian world. They are extremely territorial and very aggressive. I’ve seen them dive-bomb my dogs in the backyard. Heck, one time I had a pair light at my feet and start screeching at me while I was jst sitting on the patio minding my own business. They could not be shooed away, so I finally ducked inside before I had my own Hitchcock moment.
DanF
What’s that green crap in the background?
– Somewhere in the still frigid Midwest
Betty Cracker
@DanF: Bamboo and the ragged fronds of our banana trees.
MikeJ
@shelly: Steller’s Jays are the screechers here. That and the plain old black crows to which they are related.
Roger Moore
@shelly:
Catbirds are quite closely related to mockingbirds, so it shouldn’t be a bit surprise.
cleek
ospreys get into it too:
http://ok-cleek.com/blogs/?p=18473
Linnaeus
Maybe it’s just the lighting, but the bird in the second photo looks almost cedar waxwing-ish.
DanF
@Betty Cracker: Sigh. Green things. I saw a crocus flower the other day, so I have hope this winter will end.
Betty Cracker
@Linnaeus: It does, and we occasionally get those around here, but I think that’s a mama cardinal due to the call. I’ve seen a pair flitting about with nest-building materials lately.
Cassidy
@MikeJ: Omaha is really nice, actually. Very different from the rest of the state.
Roger Moore
@Linnaeus:
I suspect it is just the lighting. That picture has to be overexposed by a stop or two, and the color balance isn’t so great, either.
Violet
There’s a mockingbird in my neighborhood who owns the top of a light pole. He or she (not sure) is on top of that thing singing away all the time. Not so much over this past winter, but we’ve had a few warms days recently and it was back up there again. Good vantage point, I guess.
Mustang Bobby
I have mockingbirds in my back yard here in Miami and this time of year they’re getting into the freaky-deaky. From the safety of the living room I watch them go through the stretching-wing mating ritual which I assume is mockingbirdese for “Hey, baby, what’s your sign?” I had one on the roof of the garage with nest-building material in its beak glaring at me as I put away the trash can.
I have seen them chase away the peacocks, and I wanted to pay them for the favor.
Citizen_X
I once watched a mockingbird beat up on a red-tailed hawk until the hawk finally decided to take off. Mockingbird chased him all the way across the valley.
Roger Moore
@Violet:
If it’s singing away, it’s probably a he. Both genders sing, but it’s primarily the males trying to attract mates who do it.
tesslibrarian
We had a mockingbird take on our cat, Jack, when he was about 9 years old. It would attack him wherever he was outside; at least once I had to rescue him from under a bush two yards over. We retired him to indoor-only that winter after he lost an especially gruesome fight with one of the new, younger cats in the neighborhood, and thought the mockingbird would leave him alone after that.
Nope. Damn thing showed up any time he tried to sit near a window, and at a certain point, seems to have trained its young to attack him at the window, too. (They’d actually dive-bomb the screen when the window was open.) Poor Jack. They eventually gave up, which meant his last spring as he declined from cancer was spent dozing in window sills without further aggravation.
Violet
@Roger Moore: This one just loves that electrical pole. It’s been several years now, so I don’t know if it’s the same bird or a succession of birds. I figure it’s a good place to look around.
John Weiss
I once had a small cat, Pico. Like all cats she loved sleeping in a sunny spot. But for the birds, she lived the (very) good life. One day, something snapped.
You see the mockingbirds who lived in the neighborhood hated cats, not to mention the blue jays. Both sorts dive-bombed her mercylessly. One morning I saw her go from ‘sleeping’ to what must have been a three foot jump, landing with bird in mouth. Oh, the screeching! She only had to repeat the feat a few times and the birds had to content themselves with insults.
kindness
One of my cats tricks birds like that. She’ll lay out in the yard acting like she’s ignoring the dive bombing bird then jump up and catch it at the last moment. There is a Darwinism for birds too I guess.
ranchandsyrup
working from home today and watched a murder of crows (just wanted to type that, I think they’re ravens due to round tails) battle with a couple of hawks for territory. the ravens won, this round.
Roger Moore
@ranchandsyrup:
You have that backward. Ravens are the ones with tails that come to a point- sometimes called “wedge shaped” but more accurately “kite shaped”- while crows are the ones with rounded “fan shaped” tails.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
Ol’ Udamm, My dear ol’ cat, could pullem outa the sky, EXCEPT for bluebirds. The li’l shit would hide under the car when they were dive-bombing him. Prolly the only time during nesting season he actually wanted to come into the house..
raven
Bluejay attacking an owl in or yard last year. The owl is back this year.
raven
@Ronzoni Rigatoni: Bluejay not blue bird right?
tybee
@raven:
that looks a lot like a mockingbird.
or do you have gray bluejays up there?
pat
@raven:
Great shot, but are you sure that is a blue jay???
shelly
@raven:
I’d say a catbird, but they usually have a little black crewcut on top.
cckids
Our mockingbirds here attack my cats and dog. Poor old Pixie cannot even do his business without being dive-bombed. I’d LOVE one of the cats to take the little asshole out, or at least make a good attempt & scare him. Bird’s a dick.
Mnemosyne
@MikeJ:
I was up in the mountains here in So Cal one time (Big Bear-ish) pulling some stitches out from a blanket I was knitting and I swear the two Steller’s Jays watching me were critiquing my work, or at least trying to figure out what I was doing. But bluejays always seem to appear wherever I am — down here in the Valley, we get more Western scrub jays, but when we went up to Hearst Castle, there was a Steller’s Jay waiting for us. Weird.
Mnemosyne
Also, for the bird fans, Mark Twain’s “Blue Jay Yarn.”
John Weiss
@raven: Raven, that’s a mockingbird. Jays have a crest. Also in North America, bluejays are blue.
Roger Moore
@John Weiss:
Cyanocitta jays have crests. The other New World jays, including the relatively common Aphelocoma jays do not.
ETA: The thing that makes it obvious it’s a mockingbird is the white on the wings.
tones
Here is Southern California the mockingbirds all learn the 10 tone car alarm song and repeat it all night -they are awful, but really good at it.
EthylEster
front pager wrote:
So you grew up in Fla?
I did and saw many a cat under cars avoiding the mockers. They are relentless.
steverinoCT
My mother named the cardinals “John” and “Marsha”, after the Stan Freberg routine. They seem to have followed me here to Connecticut, and to the umpteenth generation; they’re still John and Marsha.
The neighbor’s cat took out a young mockingbird, and the parents (nesting in one of my trees) never let him forget it.
J R in WV
This past winter we saw a Mountain Bluebird in SE Arizona. We had a guide book with us, saw the bird, which is amazingly rich blue, bluer than Eastern Bluebird by far, looked it up to be sure.
We are getting a whole slew of new birds by spending time out west. The house is on a bench cut into a foothill at 5500 feet. Ravens frequently cruise motionless in the wind just a few feet from the edge of the bench.
This drove the two dogs we took with us berserk – they would run along the edge of the bench barking at the birds, who would ignore the dogs, mostly. If a dog had jumped after the bird, they would have fallen 30-40 feet and landed in desert scrub, cactus, pinon, rocks and scrub brush. But the birds were just 8 or 10 feet away, floating on the constant high desert wind.
Lots of hawks, and a large owl we saw when coming in past a stock tank (muddy pond) in late evening. He would drop out of his tree and fly in front of us…
StringOnAStick
We helped my FIL and BIL move to a new, rural home in central MI last week. There is a lake close by, and every time we drove past it we saw Sandhill Cranes, and a flock of wild turkeys a couple of times. The Sandhills were raiding a bird feeder in the front yard of a house; one jumped up and whacked it to knock more seed out. I’d never seen a Sandhill crane in person before, what a large bird!