There was a mockingbird in my yard today!

[conuly]

I do like mockingbirds, I like how they flash white when they fly.

I'd even like their singing if they weren't all so overly enamored with car alarms. I just don't get the appeal. You're a brilliantly smart bird, you can memorize dozens and scores and even hundreds of songs, and you've decided to rattle off your entire repertoire of car alarms every night? Apparently so!

******************

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Comments

[jhetley]

Does your mocker imitate sirens and chainsaws?

[conuly]

Don't give them ideas!

[jhetley]

None of our local mockers do those. Yet. I did try to track down a gull call on my walk route and found a much smaller gray bird perched on a roof peak . . .

Mockingbirds have extended their range up into Maine in the last three or four decades. We also have catbirds, but those migrate in the winter. The mockers don't.

[bibliofile]

I knew a grey parrot once who did that, for a while. So many funny stories over the two owners I knew (power tools, accidental opera, the faucet that kept dripping even after it was fixed, etc.).

I think mockingbirds are cool, but I've never lived in their range. Divebombing? Not usually an issue with the birds around here.

I like that your (connie's) feeders are attracting a larger and larger variety of birds.

[conuly]

To be fair, I was standing too close to their nest for too long.

[chez_jae]

OMG, that would be awful!

:D

[conuly]

They're also the only bird that ever divebombed me. Those little beaks hurt when they hit your head!

[chanter1944]

I've never actually encountered a mockingbird in my home region. I'm not sure we get them over here. The only one I've ever been close enough to identify was the tropical variety, down in Puerto Morelos, Yucatan, México this past month. So so so cool!

[conuly]

Mockingbirds have been steadily heading northwards for the past 100-odd years. I've found a few different range maps for them, the most generous of which shows that they're all over the contiguous US. However, other maps suggest that while they go that far north in the east they still are not that far north further west. *shrugs* Best guess? They're occasionally seen in your area, but not commonly.

[dark_phoenix54]

There is an elementary school about 2 miles from here, and there used to be crow who mimicked the harsh school bell, of all things. Got really old after about an hour....

[conuly]

The heart wants what it wants, I guess, and what a crow's heart wants is to sound like a school bell.

[ioplokon]

Back when I had to get up at like 4am, there was a bird that would sing to my alarm clock every morning...

[conuly]

Was it dark at 4am? Or is the sun already up at that hour where you are, in the summer at least?

[ioplokon]

It's still pretty dark, so I was probably waking the bird up too :(

[conuly]

Not if he's a mockingbird. They sing all night long!

[darkoshi]

We have mockingbirds here, but thankfully I haven't heard or at least haven't noticed them mocking car alarms.

Re "Getting vaccines in different arms improves effectiveness", I remember reading the opposite before. It must have been this study which showed a difference in killer T cells 2 weeks after the booster shot:
https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20230822/getting-covid-shots-in-same-arm-may-be-more-effective-study-says
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/998474

The more recent study/report was with more participants and over a longer time period.

Ah, here is the new study in full. It mentions the other study:
https://www.jci.org/articles/view/176411/pdf

We hypothesize that the discrepancy between our results and those of Ziegler are related to the timing of their assessment, which took place at two weeks. This would be very early in the process of immune response maturation, at a point when pre-formed germinal centers on the side of initial vaccination would likely provide an initial head-start in those receiving ipsilateral boosting. However, memory B cell expansion and affinity maturation proceed for many months after vaccination (34, 35). In our study, the first post-boost sampling occurred at a median of 20.4 days (IQR 7 days, Figure S2). A slight improvement with contralateral boosting at this time resolves into a clear long-term advantage by 8 months and continues to increase beyond one year after vaccination. We therefore speculate that there is a cross-over time at some point after 2-3 weeks, at which time contralateral boosting becomes superior to ipsilateral boosting.

[conuly]

I think it must have been that other article I posted, then.