I have often heard Mockingbirds calling Northern Cardinal songs, seemingly just
to provoke them, because they would repeat the song when the Northern Cardinal
responded. Sometimes they would do it three or four times, then switch to
something else, bored, maybe.
wrote:
On Apr 18, 2007, at 1:31 PM, Scott Fraser wrote:
> Several years ago one of our local mockingbirds used to do a decent
> rendition of a neighbor's car alarm, the sort that goes through a
> repertoire of about 8 different up/ down, & siren sweeps. A very
> entertaining bird.
I had exactly the same occurence: a mockingbird replicating a car alarm
sequence. An interesting factor was that it sang that call only between 3 and
5am, which is likely to be about the time that it heard the original coming out
of a car. So this raises the question: does the mimicing instinct include
noting and replicating the time of day that the call was learned? This same
mockingbird (who nested in a holly tree just outside my bedroom window) had
plenty of other calls it used in different dayparts.
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