Answer the phone!

There is a mockingbird that hangs around my backyard. Actually it hangs around the seven or eight backyards that are co-joined, but fenced, on my residential block in the back of the houses. It sings its ass off sometimes…beautiful but on and on and on (dare I say ad nauseam?). I see it all the time flitting about, sitting on the fences (and my birdbath) and doing its mockingbird thing, meaning it is always presenting, which is the term used for this particular avian behavior. In a way it looks like a feathery dance with wing flexing and tail bobbing. I just assumed it was a mating ritual but Google informs me that this behavior is unexplained since mockingbirds present 24 hours a day. Sort of like bird Tourette’s I guess.

But our mockingbird doesn’t sing when it’s out and about like that, it only bursts into prolonged song while hidden within the shelter of a tree or bush. I have heard that mockingbirds sometimes pick up the sound of a baby crying or a kitten mewing and incorporates it into its repertoire of bird calls. This one also has something unique and I swear it’s true. Unless my ears are deceiving me this bird has a cellphone ring within its stream of melody. It’s three short rings and then an abrupt fourth ring like the phone has been answered. The sound is a tiny bit metallic, tinny in a way, but very birdsong-like too. The first time I heard this phenomenon I just thought it was a cellphone but now I’m beginning to realize it is currently being repeated each time during the string of song imitation. Another natural miracle duly noted.