By Sally Siko

I can’t remember the last time I went out birding and didn’t see a Northern Mockingbird flying around. These guys seem to be everywhere.
This was the case when I spotted this handsome while birding at the Pocosin Lakes NWR in eastern NC.
He landed just a few feet away from me while I was photographing some swans and watched intently as I took my shots.
Every now and again he’d cock his head to the side when I’d talk to him as if he had an important thing to share with me lol!

Though I spotted this one in a wild environment, Northern Mockingbirds are a common sight here in the backyards and shopping center parking lots of central North Carolina.
The suburban landscape provides suitable (if not ideal!) habitat for Mockingbirds: dense shrubbery, open spaces, scattered trees and plenty of berry bushes.

Well known for their boisterous singing, Mockingbirds learn their songs from other birds, animals, and even machines around them. They’ll belt out their playlists round and round, a wheel of chirps, chortles, squawks and trills that dominate the local airwaves.
With age and experience, they keep learning new songs too, ever adding to an expanding repertoire at a surprisingly fast rate.Males, the louder and more relentless singers, may learn up to 200 songs in their lives! Their musical variety, then, can attract long-term mates who know that they have been around for a while and thus have the right stuff to survive.
Pretty cool huh?

Photos by @sally_siko of @bestlife_birding on my mighty mirrorless monster, the @canonusa #R5