08.26.11
Little mocker season
The cries of mockingbird young have filled the courtyard of my apartment complex. I hear them all day.
It’s a distinctive high cheep — relatively loud — signaling the parent that it’s time to fill the crop.
Pasadena is filled with mockingbirds. Every breeding season you can hear the young all over town.
Mockingbirds don’t put their nests particularly high. Think anywhere from seven to sixteen off the ground. It makes them easy to spot, particularly if the parents view anything threatening in the vicinity. It also makes them easy prey for cats and prone to disruption by the activities of people.
Still, mockingbirds persevere and do well in Pasadena’s urban environment.
When the parents spy a menace they let out a series of angry clicks. These increase in intensity and frequency the closer the ‘menace’ gets to the nest. If this is you, you’ll often feel one of the parents diving at the top of your head, pulling up at the last instant. You might even get a soft peck.
You can often see mockingbirds taking on much larger birds during breeding season. If there’s a crow in the vicinity of a nest the mockingbirds will be after it. This behavior led to an amusing scene in one of the Karate Kid movie sequels.
In The Next Karate Kid, Hilary Swank cares for an injured hawk. The hawk is eventually released. In this scene, footage is shown of the hawk being continuously badgered in flight by a mockingbird. It’s a bit amusing and must have been famously annoying to the cameramen and producer.
I know all this because the enclosed yard of a Pasadena residence I once lived in was a regular place for mockingbirds and their nests.
As a consequence, I also learned how to raise the small ones.
One summer a mockingbird family had put its nest a little too low in a tree next to a neighbor’s driveway. The young hatched and the neighbors subsequently threw a rowdy evening party right next to it.
The next morning the young birds were found to have been frightened out of the nest and into the yard, where they were discovered by our cat. Surprisingly, he was not interested in eating them.
We had been sitting outside in the afternoon listening to the agitated parents and the cat had focused on a point on the ground under some nearby bushes. We looked and there was a baby mockingbird.
Into a shoebox lined with a soft cloth it went.
The cat then took up point next to another scrub bush where a second chick was found.
It was a Sunday and the immediate problem was to figure out what to feed them and how to do it. And we had to work fast. The birds were in shock.
We reasoned that mockingbirds, being bug eaters, would probably take to a little soft liquid protein. A little bit of mushy wet cat food resuspended in lukewarm water would do until I get to the pet store on Monday for baby bird food.
However, the chicks were shocked, turned inward upon themselves and would not open their beaks to accept syringe-delivery of the food.
At this point it was necessary to get the little mouths open without harming the chicks.
I reasoned a very small sliver, made from a piece of a slightly stiff glossy magazine cover, carefully buffed a little so the edges were not sharp, just slick, might work as a miniature “pry bar.”
And it did. I could just get a little bit of it wedged between the upper and lower bills of the baby bird. When I did that, the mouth opened.
Quickly, in with the warm food. However, when doing this it’s important to slowly fill the young bird’s crop. Nothing must cause the bird to choke.
It worked! With one force feeding and filled crops the baby mockers came back to life. At that point, simply showing up with the syringe made them open up and cheep just like we were their parents.
Then came the really hard part. Feeding them every twenty minutes from sunrise to sunset for eight to ten days or until they could fly.
Because that’s what it took.
The little mockers required constant attention. After a feeding they would go relatively quiet. But as soon as the crop began to empty, the cheaping would begin.
We put the mockingbird chicks in my bedroom, in a laundry basket with a bit of branch from the tree they’d fallen out of for cover. During the first days they stayed in it. But as they grew, and they did so very quickly (you don’t get this unless you’re right on top of them constantly), they would leave it to hop about the room.
The room, of course, was tightly sealed to keep the cat who’d found them out. He was very interested in their cries and spent his days in the hall outside the door, trying to peer under the crack, hoping for a near glimpse of them reflected on the wood floor.
Poor cat. The cries and cheaps of the young birds tantalized him. Could we not see that he just wanted to be among them? Sure …
I continued to sleep in the bedroom with the birds. After sunset mockingbirds go dormant. They were always that way when I came in to lie down. And being there at sunrise made it easy to get on with the feeding as soon as they “reactivated” at the first rays of morning light.
The baby birds, being fed so often, generated a lot of crap. But it is innocuous stuff — the waste left from baby bird food of floury consistency — and one did not mind it at all. It did stain some pieces of luggage permanently, leaving marks of their rearing which can still be seen. It’s a nice memory.
At some point, late in the game, shortly before the birds can start to flutter about but well after they’re all over the rearing place, one has to wean them.
In the yard this meant the parents begin feeding them live insects and other small arthropods.
In the house this meant meal worms.
The young mockingbirds did not know what meal worms were. However, I started this the same way as with the baby bird food. I came in with the syringe. When the birds assembled and opened up, I dropped in a meal worm.
Voila!
Soon I just had to toss the meal worms in front of the chicks. That was all it took. They began exhibiting the behavior of the adults, which is to extend the wings and pulse them as they hunt for live bugs on the ground.
In case you’re wondering by now, yes — we named the chicks. Tuffy, who was the leader of the duo, or at least always making sure he was closest at first sight of an impending feed. And Fweep — an anthropomorphism of the cheeping call.
Mockingbirds are not particularly pleasant birds. They had their needs and you had to fill them. Beyond that, not much. They are not cuddly and while there is a cuteness to them, as with all young animals, they are not dear.
After about ten days of constant care the regimens of feeding were slackened. And the babies, which now were beginning to look like small adult mockingbirds — think, stumpy versions — began to flutter around the room. Our cat was now really beside himself. Such noises! Birds!
Another day passed and the birds were now always found on the top shelf on a bookcase. From there they’d fly across the room to another piece of high furniture. Back and forth they went.
It was time for them to meet the world. While I could still corral them.
Into the shoebox went Tuffy and Fweep.
Out onto the back porch and onto the garden table. The shoebox was
opened.
The birds were still. In a moment they looked up. You could almost imagine a switch closing behind the eyes. Out of the box and into the air they shot! They had their freedom, all parts in working order.
Once in the open mockingbirds are fairly difficult to distinguish from each other. Even the little ones.
Did Tuffy and Fweep stay around for a few days? Did they recognize me anymore?
There was no way to know. Nature had taken its course.
And that’s what I think of whenever I hear the calls of young mockingbird in Pasadena every summer.