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RE: Coupling - British TV Series - Intelligent, Irreverent and Hilarious
Ohhhhh the mockingbirds - last week our daughter presented the Starling for her college ornithology finals, and we were listening to their incredible imitations of chainsaws, camera shutters, and any sound they hear. Yours imitating the goats and the guinea pig, and for years to come having them in their repertoire, is sheer genius. And comedy! Birds should take over the cat monopoly on the internet!
And I totally love the Bohemian Rhapsody story. Never underestimate a mother!
Our local mockingbirds also speak fluent chainsaw, weedeater and tractor, and one has even started imitating the hammering sounds of our local woodpeckers.
We have a few different species, including pileated woodpeckers and flickers, so I always check to see who it is, and was dumbfounded one day to realize that the sound was coming from the mockingbird.
Definitely not what I was expecting.
We had a neighbor in Florida, who was having starter problems with his car, and one of our mockingbirds there started perfectly imitating his car refusing to start, which was pretty hilarious.
What amazed me the most about mockingbirds, however, is that we were a short block away from Lake Seminole, so we had a lot of ospreys and bald eagles in the immediate neighborhood, and the mockingbirds would regularly chase the MUCH bigger raptors out of their nesting areas.
Bald eagles and ospreys both have wingspans approaching six feet - mockingbirds, when protecting their young, are absolutely fearless.
They even chased away red-tailed hawks, which sometimes prey on song birds, including mockingbirds.