While I have one in my yard it's not quite movie material but my friend has one that really could be the stunt double for the Failure to Launch character. Of course some days are better than others but this mockingbird knows way too many sounds and he out to impress during all hours of the day.
Yesterday I was watching and listening to him thinking "I wonder if he naturally knew all those sounds or truly learned them all." This lead me to my favorite tool - Google where I found out that mockingbirds are one of the very few birds that continuously learn sounds throughout their whole life. There have been some that have been known to have learned over 200 different calls. They not only learn other bird's calls but they will also imitate any short repetitive sound like a car alarm, door bell, croaking frog and even a human whistle.
I'm planning on telling my friend this so the family can sit out and train their neighborhood mockingbird. I only hope that six months from now they don't hates themselves for teaching it new sounds.
I'm new to this site. What a great blog!! I have a mockingbird story. We have a few horses and 5 acres so we have lots of critter adventures. My grandparents built this house and have always had a family of "mockers" here. When we moved in, one of the constants has been the mockingbird family. One always perched on the telephone pole and showed off every day and would even brave the back porch and watch me. He followed me to the barn and back once a day and I found the nesting area in a large growth of honeysuckle behind the barn. He/she was like a pet. I've not seen them in over a year and I fear they've died. A development has grown up behind us so it's not as critter friendly around here as it used to be.
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