Listen to the Mockingbird

When a bird has murdered sleep

Recently a reader emailed me that a mockingbird sings in a tree close to his house each night and keeps him awake. He wanted to know how to discourage this bird from nesting near his house or from singing there at night.

The Northern Mockingbird is a world-famous singer, considered finer even than the Nightingale of Europe (the one John Keats wrote about in his "Ode to a Nightingale"). The male mockingbird sings a medley of songs belonging to other birds, repeating each phrase several times before moving on to the next. Unlike most songbirds, which learn their songs before they're a year old, a mockingbird continues to expand his repertoire all his life. Some include the sounds of people whistling, frogs croaking, and doorbells ringing.

Although all adult male mockingbirds sing during the day, only a bachelor sings at night. He stops doing that as soon as he wins a mate. What the person who emailed me was complaining about was a love song.

Law is on the side of love and the bird, for it is illegal to harm, harass, or remove the mockingbird.

But what about the poor human, who must get up in the morning and go to work? I replied to the mockingbird man and told him that the night singing would probably cease soon. I also told him a secret about how to cope with the "noise."

How I learned to survive night-time bird songs

I learned this secret many years ago, when my husband and I first moved to Iowa. We went camping in the woods. At dusk, as Michael and I sat watching our campfire, the Whip-poor-wills began to sing. Repeatedly, once every second, they chanted their name.

Whip-poor-will!

It was charming at first, and I was pleased to discover a bird that was new to me.

Whip-poor-will! Whip-poor-will!

The evening grew darker, the fire subsided to coals, and Michael and I went to bed. We were ready to go to sleep. The Whip-poor-wills were not. A Whip-poor-will easily performs 1000 renditions without a pause. They sang on and on.

Whip-poor-will! Whip-poor-will! Whip-poor-will!

The song was beautiful, but loud, and close, and I wondered if it would ever stop. However, it didn't seem to bother Michael. Impossible though it seemed, he was sound asleep. I turned over. I tried re-adjusting my blanket. I punched my pillow into various shapes. I felt as if one of the birds were trying to find out how near to me it could get before I reached over and grabbed it in the darkness.

It became apparent that sleep was not going to come, and eventually I gave up trying. I lay in the darkness and watched the stars and listened to the Whip-poor-wills. And gradually something remarkable happened: after I stopped trying to will it away, the song began to reveal itself to me.

I noticed textures—burriness, purrs, and accents, subtle ripples upon the larger waves of sound. The birds did seem to be singing their name, but "Whip-poor-will" was only a crude representation of the cadence. I discovered that the middle syllable was slightly doubled. "Whip-poorer-will, Whip-poorer-will." The counterpoint of several voices made shifting moiré patterns of sound.

After a while the chant began to soothe, like an ancient lullaby. Tree frogs thrummed a steady background, and a couple of Barred Owls broke in now and again with their baritone hooting.

It wasn't long before I began to drift, as if I were floating in the sound, and then to doze. Once I woke while it was still night and found that the Whip-poor-wills had fallen silent. I rather missed them. But soon they raised their voices again and lulled me deeper into their song, and off again to sleep.

It was years before I actually saw a Whip-poor-will. They are seldom found in the daytime, because they have the coloration of a handful of dead leaves, and they spend their days on the leaf-strewn forest floor, where they are perfectly camouflaged. But ever since that night I have regarded the Whip-poor-will as a particular favorite and personal friend.

My advice to the mockingbird's victim

If I succeeded in persuading my email correspondent to give up fighting against its love song, he may have a similar experience with the mockingbird. The man is interested in birds, so maybe he will detect a cardinal's greeting embedded in the bird's melodies. Or the warble of a House Wren, like the ones nesting in his birdhouse. Perhaps he'll recognize in this pouring music some notes from the longing of his own heart, and his irritation will begin to melt. It is one's irritation that keeps a person awake, not the bird.

I have found that the same principle works for other night-time voices—cicadas, frogs, and owls. Natural sounds that are annoying when I try to escape them become a pleasure when I simply listen to them.

It is ironic that we sometimes take such exception to the sounds of nature. Human beings are the most relentlessly boisterous creatures on earth. We produce noise day long and night long, most of it not nearly so melodious as the mockingbird or the Whip-poor-will.

A few years ago, when Michael and I made a video on birdwatching, we were amazed how difficult it was to find outdoor sites where the microphone did not pick up trains, road noise, and lawnmowers. A former Curator of Natural Sounds for the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology told me his greatest challenge when he was recording the songs of birds in the Amazonian rain forest was not locating the birds but finding a place where he could record them without also getting the sound of chain saws.

I hope the person who e-mailed me about the mockingbird will try my suggestion. If he does, I think the bird's song will become dear to him. And if someday he moves out of the mockingbird's range, he will miss it. I know I do.

Copyright 1998 by Diane Porter
Photo of Northern Mockingbird by Michael and Diane Porter

If you want to learn to recognize bird songs, there are many excellent resources to help you. Some tapes are encyclopedia-like collections of bird sounds. In others, such as the Birding by Ear series, the narrator tells you what to listen for and helps you fix the bird sounds in your mind so that you will remember them. See Bird Song CDs.

I admit, the poem referred to at the top of this page is a bit somber. (It was, after all, written by a man in his 20s who was dying of TB.) But you can read Ode to a Nightingale here if you want to see how the nightingale inspired one of the greatest poets of the English language.

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