FREE: Nocturnal Song Bird

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

Mockingbird available on Highland Ave near Lexington Park. Signature song is a mellifluous rendition of "The Car Alarm Song". Top performance hours from midnight to four am.

Must catch and pickup yourself; doing so probably violates some local ordinances.

Serious suggestions on how to discourage said bird from midnight singing also welcome.

Comments

[leighjen.livejournal.com]

Find him a lovely lady bird. He is singing to impress the chicks.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I will trade you for the woodpecker that sometimes haunts Bay State Ave.

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

There's a bird just like that on my street, too. Perhaps we can find a way to get them together and send them off to, say, Alaska.

[vonelftinhaus.livejournal.com]

I bet there is a natural balance maintained we could not even fathom- something much worse could be happening without them:) heck I am listening to constant chirping right now

[redcolumbine.livejournal.com]

Got one here too, but I actually consider it a sleep aid! (Loud frog choruses put me to sleep too. I'm a hick.)

[cowgrrl.livejournal.com]

There's one outside my window that sounds like an alarm clock (a really annoying alarm clock!) at anywhere from 4 to 4:30am. :(

[diatomacearth.livejournal.com]

Okay, you win at--let's be reasonable in our scope, here--you win at Davis Square. It's like a quiz show, and you won it. The prize is a stuffed kookaburra that squawks when you shake it. Enjoy.

[turil.livejournal.com]

It IS voting! :-) I'll leave it to you, and the alderpersons to figure out what it's voting for, though...

(Maybe it's voting for more open green space, and more trees, so that it has more options for nesting. Also, it's reminding us that we're an execptionally annoying species when it comes to proliferating alarming noises. :-)

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

[Yes, I know you were all joking, but it's kind of a neat topic actually.]

I don't know, I think most of the birds in Somerville are special cases.

The mockingbird's range has expanded enormously in the past 150 years -- if you look at old bird guides, you'll find that the only reports of mockingbirds in the Boston area were known to be escaped caged birds. Various articles attribute that to changed habitat, especially planting winter berries it likes (multiflora rose gets mentioned a lot). Mockingbirds like to nest in viney tangles, right? There are actually plenty of those around, which maybe is why we can have multiple mockingbirds per street. :P

The next loudest birds on my street are the cardinals, and they, too, underwent the same range expansion as the mockingbird. The English sparrows, starlings, and pigeons are all invasives. Those house finches at feeders are sort of invasive, too, having been introduced from the west coast. The robins (also very loud) appreciate the savanna-like mix of grass and trees that humans like to create.

In fact, I bet all or nearly all the birds we actually see (or hear!) in Somerville are here because the city contains unusually good niches for them, rather than being here despite the city. It's the ones who used to be here, and who are out of sight, out of mind, who make for the sad stories, and who we could do kind things for (e.g. remove all the Norway maples and Callery pears, kill all the English sparrows and starlings, let the coyotes eat all the outdoor cats, leave up dead trees, don't mow your lawn, etc. -- hey, I didn't say it would be popular!).

[turil.livejournal.com]

We're all invasives from somewhere, at some point in our ancestry. :-) But yeah, we can do a little more to welcome more diversity, especially the sorts who used to really enjoy it here, by having more different kinds of spaces, open green spaces, and tiny niche spots. Moving things around to keep the noisy night owls (be they humans or mockingbirds!) away from the early risers might help a bit.

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

I can't really say it would be convenient if only noisy, drunk frat boys ever planted multiflora rose. But it would certainly be a different world!

(Yes, I know, it's way more complicate than that. :P And yes, this is an excuse to use a rarely-used icon of mine.)

Hm. One way of looking at it is that humans create a niche for themselves to live in, and they will recreate it wherever they go, as best as they are able. The birds are here because they are happy in that exact same niche, and the kinds of landscaping changes we would have to make to deter the birds we've got would probably be unacceptable, since they would deter too many humans, too.


Another problem with birds is that they come and go as they please, and they can do unexpected things. If you do manage to selectively deter certain noisy birds (e.g. by putting a bounty on English sparrows, which I think would work if competently implemented over a large enough area), you don't know what else will move in. It might be something even noisier!

Human-created noise is probably a lot easier to control.

[turil.livejournal.com]

The thing is that the humans aren't, generally, happy in the spaces they've created for themselves, at least in Somerville. Most people are suffering from all kinds of environmentally related maladies. Overcrowding, pollution, lack of access to their own growing spaces and so on make humans miserable, even if they don't realize it (though they do know that when they go on vacation, they pretty much always want to go somewhere greener or with more open sky and clean air, water, etc.). If humans paid more attention to the quality of their own homes (interior and exterior), I bet there would be more biodiversity. And putting different kinds of niches around in more intentional ways, specifically to attract different species and types of individuals, might work really well, like permaculture, but on a whole city scale.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

I think you may have inherited the noisy little pest who kept me awake during those hours a couple years ago.

My condolences.

[withinmywill.livejournal.com]

You're not alone. I've been trying to get rid of a few of them since I moved into my house about a year ago.

[minerva42]

We just had one start up by our place in Medford, too. :/

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

teach it better songs :)

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[minerva42]

Can you do that?

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

play a loud mp3 (mockingbird podcast) in a loop, and it'll get it :)

course, your neighbors won't like it.

oddly enough, i'm watching a movie "noise" about car alarms :)

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[daviscubed.livejournal.com]

Can't believe you can hear that bird over all the plane noise!