WHY DOES THE MOCKINGBIRD SING?

Rex Burress

Maya Angelou figured out why the caged bird sings, but the mockingbird doesn't have to sing “for the thought of freedom” because it is already free!

That doesn't quite explain why the mockingbird outside of my window is constantly fighting its reflection, but I think it involves possession of territory and a touch of feisty belligerence, although I saw a scrub jay chase a mocker to the thicket recently. Hot on the pursuit of both was a hummingbird!

The mockingbird sings of freedom from where an invisible mental cage defines the territorial claim it makes for nesting during that season. There is no song-joy for intruders when they are confronted by a warning and a sharp beak.

March will bring many male songsters forth to sing to the wide world: [“...The little bird sits at his door in the sun, atilt like a blossom in the leaves,/And lets its illumined being overrun with the deluge of spring it receives. He sings to the wide-world, and she to her nest; in the nice ear of nature, which song is the best?...” --James Russell Lowell.]

Although most bird singing occurs in the springtime nest-building season, there are some songsters that just sing a melody at any time, other than their communication chirps, caws, and chits. Those who know the American Dipper, or Water Ouzel as John Muir called the stream-loving bird, have heard that burst of beautiful song even in the rapture of winter. It was Muir's favorite bird.

I have seen the Dipper along Spanish Creek, a tributary of the Feather River, especially picturesque at Oakland Camp near Quincy, CA. Hidden in the woods is one of my favorite “Pause Places.” The shore is padded by leafy duff under a creek-side Ponderosa Pine and the rapids dance with the rubbery-stemmed Indian Rhubarb plants. In the constant repetitive musical flow, the Dipper sits on a stone and sings.

The song comes as soon as the gray diver emerges from a hellgrammite hunt in the stream's shallows and goes fluttering to a mid-stream boulder. I have heard the song while the bird was airborne.

John Muir wrote of the ouzel: “Among all the mountain birds, none has cheered me so much in my lonely wanderings, for both in winter and summer he sings sweetly, requiring no other inspiration than the stream on which he dwells. In a general way his music is that of the streams, refined and spiritualized.”

Even though not strictly classed as singing, the caw of the crow, the croak of the raven, and the call of the wild goose are vocalizations you can hear at any time of the year. I'm not sure if those three even have a mockingbird-type song, but they make their presence known. The calls of wild geese flapping their way through the night sky is a wonder to behold, but ironically, you seldom hear any type of sound from flying ducks, other than whistling wings.

Most stirring and uplifting is to hear a cardinal singing from a snowy woods in the Midwest. The male seems to sing a haunting song of plaintive notes whenever the mood strikes it, claiming some kind of victory over turbulent times in the winter-drab thickets. Red bird in white snow equals intense beauty.

Mockingbirds are found year-round in the southern half of America. A pair is famously featured in a painting by John James Audubon, depicted as fighting a rattlesnake encircled on a fence-post in a thicket containing their nest.

“Water ouzels seem so completely part and parcel of the streams they inhabit, they seem to come directly from the living waters, like flowers from the ground.” --John Muir