Northern Mockingbird

About the Northern Mockingbird

The Texas state bird, the Northern Mockingbird is a slender gray songbird with paler underparts, bold white wing-patches that flash in flight, and a long, expressive tail. What it lacks in color it more than makes up for in voice: a tireless mimic, it strings together imitations of other birds - and frogs, car alarms, and cell phones - into long, repeating medleys, sometimes singing far into a moonlit night.

Bold and fiercely territorial, the mockingbird perches conspicuously on fences, wires, and treetops, and it will dive-bomb cats, hawks, and people that stray too near its nest. It flashes those white wing-patches to startle insects from the grass as it forages for bugs and fruit.

In Texas the Northern Mockingbird is an abundant year-round resident, equally at home in towns, ranchland, brushy country, and city yards across the entire state.

A note from behind the lens: their boldness and love of open, high perches make them easy and rewarding. Catch one in full song with the head thrown back, or the instant it lifts its wings in that white-flashing display, in clean side light.