{"id":41936,"date":"2026-06-27T21:53:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T01:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=41936"},"modified":"2026-06-27T21:53:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T01:53:12","slug":"right-on-top-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2026\/06\/right-on-top-of-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Right on top of it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Ha!<\/em> More puns on multiple levels!<\/p>\n<p>So sometime last year, when out early, I observed a northern mockingbird (<em>Mimus polyglottos<\/em>) on top of a Leyland cypress tree, venting forth with a varied and seemingly neverending barrage of calls, many of them lifted from other birds<strong>;<\/strong> I vowed then to return with the long lens and tripod and capture video of it. This finally happened, oh, eighteen days ago now, and I&#8217;m just now putting them up. Truth is, with other things going on I forgot I had them, and then further other things went on and I didn&#8217;t get to them. So yes, you could have had the benefit of this video quite some time back, had I been more of a man. I am instead more of a&#8230; what kind of animal procrastinates and forgets a lot? More of one of those, anyway.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding:56.25% 0 0 0;position:relative;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1205169072?badge=0&amp;autopause=0&amp;player_id=0&amp;app_id=58479\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" title=\"Northern mockingbird calls\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/api\/player.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>If you listen carefully right at 2:24, you might hear a very faint, wavering hum, which was a hummingbird coming to the salvia flowers right behind me &#8211; I did indeed change position to try and capture this later, but it never returned. Maybe it&#8217;ll only be another year before I snag that&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>When I&#8217;m out with someone observing wildlife, I will usually try to attract their attention to something specific with a particular whistle, since virtually no wildlife that I&#8217;ve encountered pays any attention to such, unlike actually calling their name or anything. I say this because a few days after recording these clips, The Girlfriend was walking down the driveway directly underneath this tree and heard me whistle for attention &#8211; except I wasn&#8217;t there. Apparently, the little plagiarizer we&#8217;ve seen here has heard me whistle at some point, and has added this to his own collection. She assures me it&#8217;s a perfect match, and confused her for a moment.<\/p>\n<p>Were I more adept at distinguishing songbird calls, I&#8217;d identify a few of these for you, but I&#8217;ve never memorized many at all. I do know there are bluejay and goldfinch in there, but somehow not Carolina wren, which are extremely common in the area. No wood duck calls either. Lazy&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ha! More puns on multiple levels! So sometime last year, when out early, I observed a northern mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) on top of a Leyland cypress tree, venting forth with a varied and seemingly neverending barrage of calls, many of them lifted from other birds; I vowed then to return with the long lens and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3809],"tags":[547,4247,4249,5457,8749],"class_list":["post-41936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-video","tag-bird-calls","tag-mimus-polyglottos","tag-northern-mockingbird","tag-territorial-display","tag-this-is-my-tree"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41936"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41938,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41936\/revisions\/41938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}