trek – 7
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hiking north park – northern mockingbird

 

Today was the first time hiking North Park that the sun was out. (The background in the above landscape image is water. I’m high up on the riverbank shooting through the trees and bare branches at the lake below.) Walked Walter Road and the north side of the lake for a total of 4.1 miles. Saw the bird at the beginning of the trek. Almost missed it, because it’s beautifully camouflaged among the vines draping the dead tree.

I sent the image to the Interpretive Naturalist at North Park’s Latodami Nature Center for ID and she wrote back identifying it as a Northern Mockingbird – once quite rate, they are becoming so common that they are now year-round residents. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology describes the specie – These slender-bodied gray birds apparently pour all their color into their personalities. They sing almost endlessly, even sometimes at night, and they flagrantly harass birds that intrude on their territories, flying slowly around them or prancing toward them, legs extended, flaunting their bright white wing patches.