Lessons from a Tricky Mockingbird
How birdwatching taught me to listen and take my time
When the pandemic started spreading through our community in the spring of 2020, and we all were sent home from the office for the foreseeable future, I found myself with more time for other pursuits outside of work.
No packing breakfast and lunch for the day. No putting on a uniform in the wee hours of the morning. And the most time-saving of them all, no lengthy commute to the office.
Instead, I filled this newfound time with backyard picnic lunches with my wife, with more walks with the dogs, and with more time in the dirt growing fruits, vegetables, and flowers. And with all of this extra attention outdoors, before you knew it I added another adjective to the list of ways to describe myself.
Birdwatcher.
With bird watching comes bird listening, and so I also began to identify birds by sound. This is helpful for birds that are difficult to see in the dark, dense oak trees of southeast Louisiana, for example.
The trouble with identifying birds by sound, however, comes in when you consider the Northern Mockingbird.
This tricky little bird mimics the sounds of all the other birds in its local patch. Mockingbirds can remember and recite an impressive library of bird sounds. They are the Spotify of the bird world.
You can imagine the frustration then when listening for new birds and hearing an interesting new tune in your patch, and it turns out to be a mockingbird. So many times I thought it was a new visitor only to be tricked, yet again, by this wily bird.
Not all is lost here though. The clever mockingbird, in singing its snippets of stolen songs, delivered an important lesson: To pause, to take a beat, to listen for a little longer than feels comfortable, so that you are certain of what you heard, so that you are not quick to assume, and so that you take the time to comprehend.
It turns out that this is useful way beyond identifying birds.