Listen to the Mockingbird

Houston is an unexpectedly wooded city. Before we moved here two years ago today, I pictured a hybrid of desert and rainforest – tumbleweeds and lianas. Descending in the jet, getting my first glimpse of the city, I saw what appeared to be endless acres of green interrupted by skyscrapers. According to a report issued this year by the USDA Forest Service and the Texas Forest Service, 28 percent of the Houston region is covered with almost 70 tree species. Most common are Chinese tallow and loblolly pine -- 42 percent of all trees in Houston.

Earlier this week I parked on a street where the branches of the post oaks mesh above the pavement and form a dense canopy. The street, even at noon on the sunniest day, remains in shade. As I walked toward the Doherty Library at the University of St. Thomas, a familiar song broke out in one of the oaks, no more than 10 feet from me. It was a male cardinal, making a song I associate with home. It’s the state bird of Ohio, where I was born, and a common sight in upstate New York, where I lived for almost 19 years. The song was loud, bold, almost arrogant – and not made by a cardinal.

When I stopped to locate the bird among the branches, I saw it was a male mockingbird whose mimicry had fooled me absolutely. “Mockers” – the state bird of Texas and Florida -- imitate the songs of dozens of other birds as well as dogs barking, lawn mowers and people whistling. I heard one in New York convincingly reproduce the sound of water gurgling through a downspout.

In Thoreau’s day, the mockingbird (like the cardinal) was largely a southern resident, and the northernmost limit of its range had only recently moved into the Northeast. He mentions the bird only twice in his work, and only glancingly. In the “Conclusion” to Walden he writes:

“To the sick the doctors wisely recommend a change of air and scenery. Thank Heaven, here is not all the world. The buck-eye does not grow in New England, and the mocking-bird is rarely heard here.”

The reference is metaphorical, rooted more in language and idea than in the close observation we expect of Thoreau. The other mention comes in his journal entry for Aug. 18, 1854:

“I think I saw a mockingbird on a black cherry near Pedrick’s. Size of and like a catbird; bluish-black side-head, a white spot on closed wings, lighter breast and beneath; but he flew before I fairly adjusted my glasses.”

On the one hand, it may have been a mistaken identification; on the other, how many of us could glean that much detail from a quick, compromised viewing? How I would have loved to swap my experience with Thoreau, and observed his reaction to the cardinal-impersonating mockingbird. I’m sure he would have smiled as broadly as I did, but probably he would have turned the mockingbird’s cunning into a metaphysical joke on all of us, for Thoreau himself was a mocker.