SF Bird Club August Newsletter

August Bird Walk

This month we're going to hit up Heron's Head Park.

The birding walk will be on the saturday morning of august 22nd. Head to the partiful link to rsvp.

Spotlight Bird: Northern mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos)

We should see one or two of these guys at Heron's Head this month so I thought they'd be a good choice as our bird of the month.

Fun Northern Mockingbird Facts:

• As their name suggests they "mock" other birds. They are another reason to actually verify what merlin is telling you:) It can also be fun to try and determine what they are mimicking and see if merlin is also picking it up
• Besides the bird mimicry they can apparently mimic artificial sounds too. Here is a fun video of one mimicking a car alarm
• Apparently they can distinguish between humans. In a 2009 paper titled Urban mockingbirds quickly learn to identify individual humans. Here is a quote from the abstract:

  In a controlled experiment, we found that as the same human approached and threatened a nest on 4 successive days, mockingbirds flushed from their nest at increasingly greater distances from that human. A different human approaching and threatening the nest identically on the fifth day elicited the same response as the first human on the first day. Likewise, alarm calls and attack flights increased from days 1–4 with the first human, and decreased on day 5 with the second human.

  Also the researchers appeared to reconfirm this in a 2023 paper.
• They are the state bird of Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas. Also formerly for South Carolina. At five states it is the 3rd most popular state bird behind the Western Meadowlark with 6 states and the Northern Cardinal with 7 states.
• They are found in sf year round.

  

• They are omnivores and mostly eat insects and fruit.

Closeout

That's all; happy birding