Birds of Song and Story

by Elizabeth Grinnell; Joseph Grinnell

We have found a pair of mockers very sly and silent just at nesting-time. Or the female will be at the nest work, while her mate is singing at a distance as if to distract us from the scene of action. However, in our grounds, where we have taught all birds extreme confidence, the good work progresses in plain sight. One writer has declared that a pair of mockers will desert a nest if you so much as look at it. This is true only where they are very wild and unaccustomed to human friends.

When once the young are hatched the fun begins. During the day the male ceases to sing, and devotes himself to giving exact information as to where the nest may be found. Of course this information is unintentional. He flies at us if we step out in sight, screaming with all his might. The nearer we approach the nest the louder and nearer he cries, until he actually has an attack of hysterics and turns somersaults in the air or quivers in the foliage. If it be possible to reach you from behind, he dives at your shoulder and nips at your hair. Always from behind, never facing you. His quiet mate flits through the boughs as if she understands her husband's exaggerated solicitude, and half smiles to see his performances.

In a day or two the young birds are able to speak for themselves, and from this on until the next brood of their parents is hatched, the youngsters keep up a coaxing squeal. Getting out of the nest in about two weeks, they fly awkwardly about, easy prey to cats and other thieves. From a nest of four or five eggs a pair of mockers do well if they raise two or even one. Night birds find them easy to steal, for they sleep on the ground or under a bush at first, being several days in learning to fly; and a much longer time in learning to eat by themselves. This year three sets of young mockers were raised on raspberries. They were brought to the patch as soon as they left the nest, where they remained on the ground along the drooping canes. The old birds kept with them, putting in all their time at teaching the awkward things the art of helping themselves. The parent bird would hop up a foot or two, seize a tip end of a twig on which was the usual group of berries, and bring it down to the ground, holding it there and bidding the young ones "take a bite." Not a bite would they take, squealing with mouth wide open and waiting for the old bird to pick the berry and place it in the capacious throat, the yellow margins of the base of the beak shining in the sun like melted butter. And butter these birds like, as well as the robins, for they come to the garden table and eat it with the bread and doughnuts and pie like hungry tramps.

Unlike the ashy white of the parent breast, the juveniles have a dotted vest very pretty to look at, which disappears at the first molt.

The natural food of the mocking-bird is fruit and meat. They catch an insect on the wing with almost the cunning of a flycatcher, and listen on the ground like a robin, for the muffled tread of a bug under a log or in the sward. They are not the tyrants they are sometimes accredited with being. The mocker does not fight a pitched battle with other birds as often as opportunity offers. Like many another voluble being, his bark is worse than his bite. Not his weapon, but his word, is law. So fraternal are the mockers, as we see them, that the close coming of them near the house in spring insures us the company of many other birds.

It is hard to outwit the mockers. They love fruit of any sort as well as they love insects. They dote on scarecrows, those "guardian angels" of domestic birds, and have been seen to kiss their cheeks or pick out their eyes.

We caused one of these terrors to stand in the Christmas persimmon-tree in the garden, thinking that, for fright of him, the mockers would stand aloof. It rained, and the first bird that came along snuggled under his chin with the hat-brim for an umbrella. That was a linnet. Along came a mocker and took refuge under the other ear of the angel. We tied paper bags around the fruit, but the mockers bit holes in the bags and took the persimmons. We pinned a sheet over the whole treetop, but peep-holes were sufficient. In went the mockers like mice and held carousals under cover.

Tamed when young, and given the freedom of the whole house, a mocking-bird feels fairly at home and is good company, especially if there be an invalid in the family. The bigger the house the more fun, for the limits of the cage in which birds are usually confined form the greatest objection to keeping them in captivity. Few cages admit of sufficient room for the stretch of wing in flight, or even for a respectable hop.

We know of no bird save a parrot which chooses to be caressed. Birds are not guinea-pigs, to be scratched into good terms. It spoils the plumage and disagrees with the temper. A mocker on the ground never trails his coat-skirt. He lifts his tail gracefully, as if he knows that contact with the grass will disarrange his feathers.

In "Evangeline," Longfellow immortalized the mocking-bird thus: