Recently I have been seeing Northern Mockingbirds (Mimus polyglottos) fairly frequently at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge. The long tail and the coloration of this bird makes it fairly easy to identify.
Normally mockingbirds are quite vocal, with an amazing variety of songs, but the ones that I have seen recently have been surprisingly silent. On the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website, I learned that, “Northern Mockingbirds typically sing from February through August, and again from September to early November. A male may have two distinct repertoires of songs: one for spring and another for fall.”
I also learned that the most frequent singers are unmated males. “Northern Mockingbirds sing all through the day, and often into the night. Most nocturnal singers are unmated males, which sing more than mated males during the day, too.” I wonder if that means that the best singers cease singing once they have found mates and the ones that we hear most often are the second-tier singers.
I was happy with the little portraits that I captured of this handsome mockingbird. The first photo shows a bit of the environment in which I found the bird, a beautiful mixture of mostly shades of brown. I really like the way that the background came out, but found the small branches to be a little distracting.
I changed my shooting angle for the second shot and cropped a little close to focus attention on the subject. As you can probably tell, I also used Photoshop to remove the little branch from the frame. Some photographers are purists and won’t remove elements from their photos or even crop them, but I do edit my shots, though most of the time I make only a small number of changes and adjustments.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 