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Northern Mockingbird

A mockingbird sits on a branch and sings. It is gray, with both dark feathers and white feathers on its wings and lighter gray feathers over most of the rest of its body.

It makes me happy whenever I see or hear a Northern Mockingbird. They love to sing, and their bright, sweet, ever-changing songs make them easy to identify and fun to listen to. They are mimics, weaving multiple bird songs in with their own, repeating each phrase up to 6 times.[1] A male's repertoire may include up to 200 sounds![2] 

Mockingbirds are not very colorful—they are gray and white—but they have a certain elegance to them, particularly in the way they arch their long tails as they perch. Sometimes they find a perch so they can survey the ground below for food.[1] Insects and berries make up most of their diet; they are rare visitors to bird feeders.[2, 3]

A mockingbird sits on the branch of a live oak and tilts its head. Sunlight catches its feathers. Its feathers look very smooth. There is a dark stripe reaching from its beak to its eye.

Along with being singers, Mockingbirds are swoopers. If you've ever seen a cat (or a person!) being divebombed by a mockingbird, you'll know what I mean. They are territorial and fierce defenders of their nests, which they typically hide in shrubs or trees under 10 ft.[4, 5] 

Mockingbirds build their nests together, but they specialize.[3] Males builds most of the frame, sometimes crafting multiple nests for the female to choose from, while the females find materials to line the nests with.[1, 3] The female lays around 5 eggs, which are a beautiful light blue-green, spackled with brown. She incubates them for just under 2 weeks.[3, 4]  

Mockingbirds also have literary fame. They appear in Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder, very briefly in The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and most famously in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, where the birds are lauded for their heartfelt singing.[6-8]

Northern Mockingbirds are special, happy, and fun, and their melodies are beautiful. Have a listen to the one below:


The Details:

Common Name: Northern Mockingbird
Scientific Name: Mimus polyglottos
Family: Mimidae
Seen: Perched in trees
Month: March
Range: The Northern Mockingbird can be found in every contiguous U.S. state all year long. Its range extends down into Mexico and the Caribbeans Islands and slightly upwards into Canada.[9] 

These birds are well loved. They are the state bird of five states (Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas), which makes them the third most common state bird, following the Northern Cardinal and the Western Meadowlark.[10]

Learn More:

  1. Smithsonian's National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute. (n.d.). Northern Mockingbird.
  2. Cornell Lab of Ornithology. (n.d.). Northern Mockingbird: Overview. All About Birds.
  3. Kaufman, K. (1996). Lives of North American birds. Houghton Mifflin.
  4. Miller, A. H. (1964). Mockingbirds and thrashers: Artists of mimicry and song. In M. B. Grosvenor & F. G. Vosburgh (Eds.), Song and garden birds of North America, pp. 196–207. National Geographic Society. 
  5. Alsop, F. J. (2002). Birds of North America (American ed.). Dorling Kindersley Limited. 
  6. Wilder, L. I. (2016). Little house on the prairie (EPub ed.). HarperCollins. (Original work Published 1935).
  7. Rawlings, M. K. (1966). The yearling. Simon Pulse. (Original work published 1938). 
  8. Lee, H. (2010). To kill a mockingbird (50th anniversary ed.). Grand Central Publishing. (Original work published 1960). 
  9. Cornell Lab of Ornithology. (n.d.). Northern Mockingbird: Range Map. All About Birds.
  10. Munson, O. (2023, July 25). State birds across America: See every state bird across the United States. USA Today. 


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