As I walked the other day, I observed a Mockingbird pestering a Redtail Hawk. Plucky birds that they are, he cut in and out, notifying the hawk that he was in his territory. The hawk made his ponderous circle upward to free himself from the pest. You know that if he got ahold of Mr. M he would shred him between his talons and beak, but it is not to be because Mockingbirds can make much quicker cuts that hawks can’t follow.
A few days later I heard a Mockingbird as it sat singing in a Maple tree as I walked past. He jumped up to the powerline as I passed under the tree and continued to sing. I have lost count at around 25 to 30 different songs of an educated Mockingbird that used to sit on the light pole where I once taught school, entering under his joyous morning songs. And that reminds me how that I don’t like the name Mockingbird, because they don’t sneer or make fun. Neither do they plagiarize their songs since they give credit to their composers by the songs they sing and to the Creator of them all. Perhaps they should be called Song Learning Birds or Repeater Birds or Remix Songbirds. Anyway, I love to hear them sing.
Yet another day walking I observed Mr. M making a perfect two point landing on a lawn. Approaching at full speed, he flared his flight feathers at the last possible split second and seemed to simply step off of the air onto the lawn. My eye could hardly follow the transition for the speed, but Mr. M executed the move into a bush not long after and I caught more of the action. Then he flew almost vertically from bush to an altitude of 30 feet to peck at an intruding competitor. The two M’s made their quick cuts to claw at and peck toward one another in quick succession. I thought how much more dangerous they were to one another than the hawk was to Mr. M or visa-versa.
I could not have seen any of the flight action had it not been for the color and flashing of feathers. Their lateral tailfeathers are white against the gray background of the rest. They have white mid-wing feathers that barely show until they spread their wings wide. When Mr. M turned his wings downward for the perfect landing, the white on dark gray feathers showed straight in my direction. M’s are not so colorful as other birds but they always seem to be dressed up for any occasion, looking rather sharp.
All of the brief encounters with Mr. M over the past week have caused me to reflect on this pleasure at observing him in various ways and at various times. I have always favored the species, but I think that I could now say that Mr. M at least ranks if not holds the highest regards in my mind among birds. His Creator is certainly of the most intelligent, beauty-loving, design worthy sort, unmatched by any other.
CreatorWorship 