Photo Gallery

If you’ve been hearing an endless string of 10 or 15 different birds  singing outside your house, you might have a Northern Mockingbird in  your yard. These slender-bodied gray birds apparently pour all their  color into their personalities. They sing almost endlessly, even  sometimes at night, and they flagrantly harass birds that intrude on  their territories, flying slowly around them or pranci

Northern Mockingbirds are common in  backyards, but they don’t often visit feeders. You can encourage  mockingbirds to visit your yard by keeping an open lawn but providing  fruiting trees or bushes, including mulberries, hawthorns, and  blackberry brambles. Find out more about what this bird likes to eat and  what feeder is best by using the Project FeederWatch Common Feeder Birds bi

Look for Northern Mockingbirds sitting  high on tall shrubs, poles, or utility lines. Around your yard, you can  also look for them running or hopping along your mowed lawn. You may be  able to first identify the presence of a Northern Mockingbird by  listening for its song which usually mimics numerous other birds at  once.

This one pictured actually grabbed this spider right after a

Northern Mockingbirds continue to add new sounds to their repertoires  throughout their lives. A male may learn around 200 songs throughout its  life.

The Northern Mockingbird frequently gives a "wing flash" display, where  it half or fully opens its wings in jerky intermediate steps, showing  off the big white patches. No one knows why it does this, but it may  startle insects, making the