The Northern Mockingbird is a familiar sight throughout most of the US and Mexico. Though they are common to woodlands and rural areas, most people are familiar with them as frequent visitors to the suburban garden where their amazing vocal abilities earn them equal parts admiration and annoyance. I must admit that the closest I ever came to even considering doing harm to a bird was when a male Mockingbird chose the wisteria vine directly outside my bedroom window as its preferred perch from which to erupt with its deafeningly loud mating song every morning (beginning at about four am and proceeding well into daylight hours) for several weeks one Spring. Viewed and heard from a proper distance, this display is at least impressive, and sometimes beautiful or even haunting. The male finds the highest perch he can and sings a long string of every sound he knows, some original to him, others imitations of everything from other birds’ songs to car alarms, slamming doors, snatches of music, barking dogs, and so on. When he’s finished, the entire litany is repeated, sometimes for hours on end. As he sings, he will occasionally fling himself skyward in a brief, spastic summersault, during which he flashes his white wing patches to impress any females attending to his performance.

I saw this fellow in a nearby park where I had initially gone intending to observe burrowing owls. The owls didn’t cooperate that afternoon, but this Mockingbird did. Though the Mockingbird is far from the showiest or most colorful bird I know, they are not lacking in theatrics or personality. They do, after all, receive quite a significant mention in one of the most widely read and well-loved of American Novels, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. This fellow was singing his heart out, and I have captured him here during a pause in his vocalizations, just as he is about to hurtle himself into some mid-air acrobatics. The background pattern, into which the tree on which he perches dissolves, is intended to suggest the complexity of his mating song. More broadly, the weave of branch, bud, and stem, and the circuit-like maze into which it expands, suggests the intricate poetry of the natural world itself. Though there is no mistaking the sound of a Mockingbird to anyone who has ever heard one, even once, each bird’s song is an entirely unique reflection of its life experiences. This piece is my visual exploration of those rare and wonderful patterns of speech.