Mockingbirds are a fixture in popular American culture. They provided inspiration for the Mockingjays in The Hunger Games. Harper Lee named her classic To Kill a Mockingbird after them. And James Taylor and Carly Simon performed a rollicking song about these creatures whose own “music” once made them prized pets.
But how much do you really know about America’s ever-present Northern mockingbird, revered for centuries by Indigenous peoples?
Here are some fun facts about Mimus polyglottos, the “many-tongued mimic.” Its amazing range of vocalizations — from the calls of fellow birds to a doorbell and a cat’s meow — provides endless enchantment.
Mockingbirds hold great significance to many Indigenous peoples. To tribes in the Southeast, they symbolize intelligence. In Arizona, members of the Tohono O’odham Nation consider them a peacemaker or diplomat, while according to Hopi mythology, the bird delivered the gift of language to humans.
The birds were a popular pet in the 18th and early 19th centuries — so popular that they nearly became extinct in some parts of the country. Around 1830, a mockingbird with an especially wide repertoire could fetch as much as $50, equivalent to $1,800 today.
Mockingbirds pick up their calls from the environment, unlike most bird species, whose vocalizations are learned from parents. By adulthood, an especially adept male mockingbird can memorize and produce as many as 200 distinct calls, mimicking the sounds of other birds, frogs and toads, mammals, and even car alarms and cell phones. A “virtuoso bird” can sing up to an hour without repeating itself.
They actually benefit from the spread of development and invasive species. Mockingbirds feast primarily on insects — much easier to catch in open spaces like mowed lawns — while the proliferation into the Northeast of the non-native multiflora rose has allowed the birds to expand their territory. The roses offer tasty berries, plus thorny branches that provide safe nesting habitat.
Only male mockingbirds sing during breeding seasons, typically from March through August, and both sexes will chime in from September to early November. Males often vary their “playlist” from season to season, and until they secure a mate they will sing night and day, sometimes nonstop.
Females are attracted to males with a wider repertoire. It’s a sign to her that he’s a responsible partner, critical since the male does the lion’s share of parenting — building the nest, feeding the young, and scaring off predators.
Mockingbirds breed prodigiously, nesting up to seven times during breeding seasons and laying as many as 27 eggs in a single season.
They’re extremely territorial, in part because they nest very close to the ground (typically 3-8 feet above it). In addition to scaring off predators such as hawks and snakes, mockingbirds are likely to swoop down on family pets and even humans who get too close to their nests.
In creating and arranging their sounds, mockingbirds employ some of the same techniques used by humans to compose music. A study by musicologists, biologists, and neuroscientists concluded that the “compositional strategies” of mockingbirds are eerily similar to those found in everything from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Tuvan throat-singing to Kendrick Lamar’s “Duckworth.”
Reed Sparling is a former staff writer and historian at Scenic Hudson. He is the former editor of Hudson Valley Magazine, and currently co-edits the Hudson River Valley Review, a scholarly journal published by the Hudson River Valley Institute at Marist College.
