Echoing in the Morn

  Mark and I are in Georgia visiting our son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter.  As you can imagine, we are thrilled to be back here once again.  Early this morning, Mark took our sweet little angel of a granddaughter out on the back deck but then came right back inside beckoning me to come join them.  Once outside, he pointed to a bird in the top of a tree at the corner of their yard.  "What is it?" he queried.  "I have never seen such a white bird."  Sure enough, when I looked skyward, a white bird came into view.  The sun was shining so brightly that it made seeing the bird from this angle rather difficult.  At first, I was not sure but then, the identification became quite clear.  Even though I could not see the bird, its song told me just who was in the yard.  "That is a Northern Mockingbird." I told him.  His reply was "They are not white." which was not altogether true.  Mockingbirds are mostly white when viewed from underneath and this bird being so very high in the tree was definitely viewed from that angle.  Plus, mockingbirds have a tendency to fluff their white plumage (theoretically) as a sign of defiance or intimidation.  (Works for me!)  The bird did, indeed, appear mostly white with its chest feathers fluffed in a major "puffball formation"!

  The Northern Mockingbird is one of the few birds that can sing a seeming endless trill of sounds as their song.  The birds can learn to mimic most any other bird's call and even imitate the sound of phone ring tones!  Why..back at home on the Bayou, we have one that sounds so much like a telephone that several times we have mistaken it for just that and there is another that has fully learned to mimic not only the daytime birds but can imitate the Whip-poor-will call almost identically.  They are highly intelligent birds!

  We listened to the bird sing its morning song high in the tree above us.  Its music was an enjoyable part of our morning.  I had to snicker a bit when I recalled that a group or family of mockingbirds is called an "Echo" or a "Plagiary".  How appropriate is that on both accounts? They do echo others and can be said to be plagiarizing other birds. Our fluffy, white friend, once finished with serenading us, flew off into the wooded area behind their house.