Bird's Eye View

Sitting at the top of a tall tree, the male cardinal sings out his territorial song just as the first light is coming into the sky. It is April and he is letting other cardinals know he has THIS territory for himself, his mate and any young that manage to survive. After a few long choruses, he looks down and sees a figure, dressed in the same red as he, putting a box up, the box with the seeds. He flies down to a smaller tree and the figure hangs the box, turns, looks at him and says something. Then, the figure goes back inside and the cardinal comes down to eat. 

He grabs a seed and jumps atop the iron feeder pole, eating as he looks around for any predators or rivals. His mate flies to a nearby shrub and he takes a seed to her, which she accepts. He flies back to one side of the box, his mate the other. They eat until they are full or something spooks them into the bushes. But they'll be back.

Female cardinal (Margo D. Beller)

In sports there is March Madness. For birders the madness revs up in April, when northbound migrant birds are heading for breeding territories and pass through my area. But this is also when the resident birds prepare to breed. Starting in late March, the birds in my yard have been arriving at the feeders in pairs, two by two like Noah: Two house finches. Two cardinals. Two titmice. A downy woodpecker male comes to the suet, flies off and is replaced by a female. Pairs of robins are walking over my lawn, looking for worms, grubs or insects. Sometimes the male in one pair will fly at the other male, jockeying for more space.

Not long after sunrise you can find me standing outside my back door after I have put out the feeders and water in my long, red robe. The male cardinal comes almost immediately to the house-shaped seed feeder, a hairy woodpecker to the suet. It is good to see both male and female hairy coming because that means a nest has been excavated out of a tree nearby. There was a time I would confuse the hairy with the smaller, similar looking downy. Not now. Other woodpeckers call - flickers, redbellys and the occasional pileated -  and I've been hearing more Carolina wrens calling.

Singing male cardinal (Margo D. Beller)

It is a fine time of year, especially when my many types of daffodils are in bloom. Daffodils are my favorite flower because all their parts are toxic, so the flowers aren't eaten by deer and the bulbs aren't eaten by squirrels or chipmunks. I wish these fine flowers - available in an assortment of colors, sizes, even petal types - grew all year. But they'll be gone soon, to be replaced by other flowering perennials.

When the red azalea blooms it will be time to think about putting out a hummingbird feeder. These birds are drawn to red flowers. As of April 16, according to one website that tracks the migration of all types of hummers in the U.S., the ruby-throated hummingbird (the only one regularly found in the east) has already been seen in the southern part of the state. Another warm day with strong winds from the south and the birds should be up where I live.

There are still white-throated sparrows around with the chipping sparrows singing in my front yard. Juncos are rarely seen now and the catbird has not made it up here yet. Soon.

Hummingbird at a friend's feeder (Margo D. Beller)

Same with the house wrens, so I haven't put out the wren nest box yet. The kinglets, ruby-crowned and golden-crowned, have come, as have the blue-gray gnatcatchers and the pine and palm warblers. Ospreys are on their nests. Fish crows are flying with nest-building materials in their beaks. Even a pair of cowbirds, those parasites of songbird nests, recently came to my feeder.

The recent heavy rain has prompted the oaks and other trees to flower and leaf out. (The maples have been in flower for some time.) Usually the reports of warblers increase once the tree is full of green leaves, making it even harder to find these colorful birds unless you know their songs.

This is why no matter how bad winter gets, how dark, cold and snowy, I look ahead to when it will finally be spring and the daylight will lengthen and the climate warm. But not too much. I am in no rush for summer.

Listen to the Mockingbird

If you want to know what kinds of birds are in a particular area, look for a mockingbird.

I say “look,” because you will recognize the gray thrush-like bird with the long tail with white edges and a white patch on each wing.

What you won’t recognize is its song. It doesn’t have one.

Found in all 50 US states, this bird takes the songs of other birds it hears, which is why it is a particularly good indicator of what’s around that particular patch. The mockingbird will repeat a call anywhere from two to 20 times before switching to another. It can literally sing for hours.

My father-in-law told me he was once entranced for 30 minutes by the repertoire of a gray bird on his roof, which I identified for him as a mockingbird. These birds make it easy for you to find them. They like to sit on a roof or high in a tree or on a structure next to something that will amplify his singing. I’ve seen them singing in a giant satellite dish and on a tall, bare tree that was close to a building, which provided an echo.

The bird is called the northern mockingbird but I can’t imagine why since all my associations with the bird are with the south. There’s the wonderful “To Kill a Mockingbird” - both the book and movie - which takes place in the south. It is the state bird of Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas, all once part of the Confederacy.

I have heard as many as six mockingbirds singing at the same time, at an apartment complex near the water in Jersey City. I have heard as many as three widely scattered around a parking lot. Usually you’ll hear a hissing as the singer chases an interloper out of his territory. About the only time I don’t see mockingbirds chase other mockingbirds away is when a male needs to find a female.

Mockingbirds aren’t intimidated by size either - my husband and I have seen them chase American crows, grackles and even redtailed hawks away from a nest or, when chasing off a robin, a bush filled with berries. (Like its cousins the robins and bluebirds, mockingbirds don’t come to feeders unless you are providing them fruit. But since they are so possessive I don’t bother.)

They will sing early in the morning and late into the evening, for long periods of time. In New York City I have heard them imitate car alarms pretty effectively.

I recorded one once in an Englewood Cliffs, N.J., parking lot not far from the Palisades and among the calls that I recognized were a blue jay, great crested flycatcher, robin, titmouse, gull, cardinal, carolina wren, red-winged blackbird, redbellied woodpecker and a white-breasted nuthatch - and that was just in 2 minutes, 28 seconds.

(Here is another mockingbird someone else recorded and posted on YouTube.)

For a bird with no song it shows up in a lot of songs. There’s lyricist Johnny Mercer of Savannah, Ga., who put the mockingbird in many of his songs including “Blues in the Night.”

There’s the folksong “Listen to the Mocking Bird.” (An alternate spelling. The song is from the mid-nineteenth century.)

There’s the familiar children’s lullaby that begins, "Hush, little baby, don't say a word, Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird" - a song sampled by Eminem, of all people, in his sad song about the breakup of his family.

The lullaby was updated by Inez and Charlie Foxx in 1963 for their hit “Mockingbird,“ later covered by a lot of people including (as seen on YouTube) Dusty Springfield, Aretha Franklin, the cast of “Dumb and Dumber” and Carly Simon and her then-husband James Taylor.

There’s also another song of loss, by Rob Thomas, that goes: You and me tried everything/But still that mockingbird won't sing.

Must be pretty bad for Rob because the mockingbirds I’ve found have had no trouble singing.

What is it about the mockingbird that brings out the melancholy in some people? Perhaps it’s the constant melodic singing that makes people think of another constant that might be gone, like love?

Thankfully, the mockingbird’s song doesn’t have that effect on me.