Learn Something Small About Why Mockingbirds Sing at Night (in New York City)!
Image: A dark blue rectangle with a gold border. shows a cutout photo of a mockingbird — a slim bird with a whit underbelly, gray back, and gray, black, and white wings. The logo for Learn Something Small with Jacqueline Raposo has bubbles leading to the title “About Why Mockingbirds Sing at Night in New York City.”
An Introduction + Listening Suggestions
I made this 15-minute small audio story after an unexpected and thrilling encounter with a mockingbird, late one evening. Its robust tune cut through muted city street noise, playing a sharp contrast to the hollow echo that usually resounds as we walk with the clock nearing midnight.
Click the triangle below to listen to this beautiful bird’s carousel and learn something small about why mockingbirds sing at night so.
For a truly immersive sound story, I suggest you listen at night, when your world is dark and quiet, too.
— Jacqueline xo
(Hit the triangle above to play)
Further Learning…
Related episodes of Bird Note that I love:
The Northern Mockingbird — “It’s the middle of the night. Who’s doing all that singing?”
Singing in the City — “What was that? I can’t hear your song over the sound of traffic!”
A few of the organizations I bird with + learn from + love:
The Feminist Bird Club — the only group I’ve been physically able to bird watch with in NYC.
BirdAbility — a new official organization developed from a group of disabled birders helping to make birding more accessible to us disabled birders!
Audubon Park New York — not about birding, but about the historic district of NYC where I’ve lived, and where this episode was recorded + made.
All About Birds — a wing (cough) of The Cornell Lab’s massive ornithology program. Download their Merlin app to identify birds on the go!
A few articles to coax you into the rabbit hole:
Singing In The Dark: 7 Of The Most Captivating Nighttime Songsters In The U.S. — by Joe Lowe at ABC Birds
Listen to the Mockingbird — at Birdwatcher.com
Learn about Mockingbirds at MassAudubon
Why the Mockingbird Sings: And Why at Night, When Most Birds Sleep? — by William Jordan for The L.A. Times
The poem “Mockingbird” by Randall Jarrell. Listen to the poem and find at transcript at BirdNote.org. Click on the image above to be directed to the Birdnote episode.
More Small Audio Stories…
