Bulldog birds
Friday May 06th 2022, 9:11 pm
Filed under: Garden,Wildlife

There’s a pair of mockingbirds whose nest is either somewhere down in the dense tangle of my mango tree or else close to it.

They know what squirrels do to eggs and baby birds and they are not having it–they take turns divebombing them, this one from this direction and then when it turns tail, that one from that, so as always to be attacking from behind and in tandem any time one comes towards my yard in that corner of the fence line.

I watched one squirrel today try to cautiously sneak in on the upper telephone wire and then drop down at the last to the lower one on the approach.

Here they come! He was out of there, away from my yard, my cherries, my peaches, and for that matter the garden next door. Those beaks and potential fur-grabbings were not worth it.

It’ll be awhile before my August Prides get ripe but the earliest ones, now up to ping pong ball size, have begun to take on some quite premature pink. This is usually when they start getting raided.

Swoop! Swoop!

Go mockingbirds go!

Wikipedia says that they live up to 8 years in the wild but 20 in captivity (compared to the single year of your average squirrel out there.) And that they remember where their nests were the most successful and return to that spot the next time.

The squirrels don’t like the smell of the mango, probably for the latex in the sap, and even when it has ripening fruit they avoid coming too close to it. The mockingbirds may well have figured that out.

This could be a trend. I like it.

All I need now is to teach them barking bulldog sounds. They’ve earned that addition to their courting repertoire.


3 Comments so far
Leave a comment

Nature’s symphony played out in your back yard. Awesome!

Comment by Jayleen Hatmaker 05.07.22 @ 6:20 am

Welcome mockingbirds!!

Better than a noisy dog for putting those squirrels on the run. Would love to hear them add a bark to their song though. The squirrels would say “???”

Comment by Chris+S+in+Canada 05.07.22 @ 7:46 am

Will the mockingbirds eat your fruit, though, as it gets ripe? Aren’t birds also a problem, besides the squirrels? I guess you attach all those plastic clamshells…

Comment by Marian 05.07.22 @ 9:08 am



Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)