A birder walks into a clearing, and there’s a Song Sparrow singing its heart out. In chimes a Robin, followed by a Grosbeak and a Tanager, a Wood Thrush and a Warbler, all chirping at the same time.
Sounds like a bunch of songbirds out having a party. But it’s only the Northern Mockingbird. He is the party.
This could be the start of a great joke, but it’s just too infuriating. So many times it sounds like you’ve hit the birding jackpot only to be fooled by one wily, nondescript, gray-and-white bird.
It’s awful having your dopamine high dashed like that, and it’s happened more times than I care to count. Over the years I’ve come to seriously resent this bird.
So. The Mockingbird is a “mimic” – a type of bird who’s remarkable for his ability to imitate the songs of other birds. The male can have a repertoire of more than 150 songs, and he continues to learn new ones throughout his life. He even mimics the sounds of insects, animals and things that aren’t alive. Machinery for example. Researchers have identified Mockingbirds with 203 imitations.
arting at dawn they’ll form teams and scour nearby “Important Bird Areas,” counting species to help evaluate how this year’s migrating birds have fared on the flight across thousands of miles to their breeding grounds. Here are some of what they’re likely to see in a gallery of photos Anders has taken from our recent migration trip (run your cursor over the pictures for their species).
“I was fascinated by migration at a very early age,’’ said Farnsworth, who works out of New York City and oversees the lab’s 
Saturday is the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s “Global Big Day,” a highlight of the spring migration when birders around the world count as many species they can find in 24 hours.
The whole point of having a birding bag like mine is to anticipate disaster and be fully prepared to deal with it. Inside there’s a tube of sunscreen, a water bottle, gum, lip balm, tissues, hand sanitizer, lens cleaners, a protein bar and dental floss. (Dental floss makes a great temporary shoestring or emergency suture, but mine’s there in case a bit of the protein bar gets stuck in my teeth.)
At long last, the highlight of the birding year – the spring migration — is just a week or two from its peak in much of the country, and so there’s a lot to talk about.
The party got us thinking of how much birding advice and wisdom there is, and also about the many people who ask us how to get started. So we sat down for a conversation with Beehler, a Smithsonian research associate at the National Museum of Natural History’s Division of Birds, whose encyclopedic new book is called,
