This is the time of year when the mated pair of mockingbirds who claim my homestead as their territory return. Last year they built a nest in the thick canes of the climbing rosebush by the carport, and in its thorny bower, had raised babies. I worried about them every time the mosquito truck came around, pumping chemicals all over their nest, but they survived.

When the pair was feeding babies, they would make many trips in and out of the nest. If I came outside and the door slamming disturbed one of the parents, it would fly up on the clothesline pole and stare fixedly at me with its black eyes, with its tail twitching. But since I never bothered them, they relaxed a bit. I felt priveleged and honored they would call my rosebush their home.

This year they returned to the same place and soon I could hear cheeps from baby birds. So did some maurauding critter. One morning I went out to find a predator had bent down the thickest cane on the bush, a cane as big as a mans thumb, and pulled the nest down and eaten the babies.
The mockingbirds kept flying over their destroyed home and I didn't want them to rebuild in the rosebush because of the mosquito chemicals, so I hired someone to cut the bush back almost to the ground. The pair rebuilt across the road, but still fly over my place and claim it as their own. They are very territorial, and will chase off any intruding birds.

Last night the moon was full and I was wakened at midnight by a mockingbird singing by my window. They are very loud! It sang and sang--they sound exhuberant and exhultant when they sing, so cheerfully happy. Could anyone have a more transcendant experience--ghostly moonlight spilling across the bed and floor, and in the quiet of the night having a mockingbird singing to you? I got up and went to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal, and the bird relocated to the wild grapevines in the back of the house and kept singing. (I notice they don't try to imitate Chuck's Will's Widow birds or owls.) Mockingbirds vocal cords never give out. I stayed up puttering around till 3am, and as if on cue, the bird and I retired at the same time. Then I could hear the chuck will's widow birds plaintive calls in the hollows, and slept listening to them.

A few years ago dwellers in an apartment complex in the Big City complained to the manager that a mockingbird singing at night was disturbing their sleep and they wanted the manager to kill it since trying to shoo it away didn't work. The manager said he had no jurisdiction over the habits of wild birds, so the tenants heard it sing every night during its season for singing in the moonlight. What an idea! To kill a mockingbird wouldn't be morally right. Come to my place, little birds. You are welcome here.

susil