ForumGarden

Each morning when we get up we switch off the airconditioning, open doors and windows, slide the screen doors closed to keep out any bugs and sit down to enjoy breakfast while listening to and watching the many different bird species who arrive to eat and drink at our feeders.

We see goldfinches and purple finches quietly perched on their tubefeeders, noisy grackles fighting over sunflower seeds, buffalo birds with their strange gurgling song, robins on the ground pulling up worms, screeching bluejays, well behaved bluebirds, timid mourning doves and many more.

We also have a regular breakfast time visit from a mockingbird.

This sleek little gray and white bird arrives at his favorite perch on a nearby maple tree and entertains us with his amazing songs, faithfully copying every other bird in the neighborhood.

He also reproduces our cuckoo clock which he can hear clearly through the screen doors but he hasn't yet mastered the art of telling the time.

This morning at 7am he announced that it was 2 o'clock, 5 o'clock and 13 o'clock all in the space of a few minutes!

If anyone knows how to teach mockingbirds to tell the time please let me know.

Philadelphia Eagle wrote:

He also reproduces our cuckoo clock which he can hear clearly through the screen doors but he hasn't yet mastered the art of telling the time.

This morning at 7am he announced that it was 2 o'clock, 5 o'clock and 13 o'clock all in the space of a few minutes!

If anyone knows how to teach mockingbirds to tell the time please let me know.
:yh_whistl :yh_chickn

Hmm...interesting. I would suggest a large talking clock. The kind that has the birds at each of the numbers, and chirps out the time. That may help.

He is the Texas State bird. He hs no song of his own so he "mocks" others. He can even do the he haw of a jackass.

It must be nice to open your windows and doors in the morning. Down here in the bowels of hell, we don't really have cool weather. We don't need all that crazy gunk to take wallpaper off the walls, we just open our doors and windows.

We walk down the street and say, "Oh, look there's a daffol...oh well, summers here." Or, "Look the trees are changing. . . oh well, time to rake the yard."

I watch people on the weather channel shoveling snow in their shirt sleeves and think, aren't they freezing? When we have cold weather, for a day or so, we have to wear six layers of clothes to keep from getting frostbite. It's that humid, winter, spring, summer and fall. . . or warm, hot, hotter and hottest. Up north they have people who die from the cold, down here we have people whose houses burn down because we don't understand the concept of a fire to keep you warm. :wah:

But I do love listening to the birds while I run to my car and turn on the air conditioner! :-6 :-6

Mourning doves get on my nerves. They are everywhere in my trees.

They are so stupid or lazy, I'm not sure which. You have to practically step on them to make them move and when they take off their wings make this sound like you've scared the poo out of them.

And they sit on the wire that runs over my driveway and poo on my car all day long. You never see just one. I think they must mate for life and they're like family; they move in and never leave!

I'm sure you know why a mourning dove makes that funeral-like call.

It's the unattached males looking for a mate!