Bird nerd

There is northern mockingbird singing his little heart out right outside my window right now.  It makes my little musical heart happy.

Source: US Fish and Wildlife Service

 "Why Colleen," you may ask, "how can you tell it's a mockingbird if it's mocking other birds?"  Good question!  There's a fun trick I learned from my ornithology professor about this :)  Mockingbirds sing a progression of different bird songs in groups of 3 or 4.  So you may hear the same mocked song 3 or 4 times, then another mocked song 3 or 4 times, and so on.  Other birds that mock have different patterns.  This video demonstrates it pretty well, and if you're from Maryland you may recognize some of these pre-dawn calls:

The real question is, why on earth is a bird singing so vociferously in October?  The breeding season is over, and all the juveniles have fledged, even second nesting attempts.

I know - I am a big bird nerd :)

The lusty songs of birds

Hello!

This photo cracked me up so hard I just had to share the giggle.  Duck photobomb!  (I just realized this is the second funny duck photo I've posted.  What is it about ducks that I find so hilarious?)

Today is a really quiet day.  Mostly I've been relaxing with United States of Tara on Netflix streaming, and checking up on the blogs I follow.  

Right now there is a catbird singing outside my window.  At least I'm pretty sure it's a catbird - it hasn't yet made the tell-tale "mew" sound yet.  Mimic birds can be hard to tell apart sometimes.  I can also hear a cardinal, robins, crows, a mourning dove, something making a high-pitched "zee" noise I can't identify, and those damned invasive house sparrows. 

I'm really into bird calls, if you can't tell.  And really good at identifying them, too.  I realized this back in college when I took a bird taxonomy class.  Most of my classmates were good at visual ID, but me, I always focused on the songs.  Maybe it's all those years of musical training that make it easier for me to distinguish things like tone, articulation, melody, timbre and texture, and rhythm and learn to attribute them to different sources.

Thrushes are my favorite bird to listen to.  Their songs are so melodic and complex, like songs of the gods. Here's a video of a Wood Thrush song, which has a delightful echoiness to it when heard in the woods.  They're not as common in the DC 'burbs where I live now, but we used to hear them all the time during our bird taxonomy field trips in Delaware.

Birds sing to attract mates and to mark their territory.  Not unlike the music written by humans, really!