Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos)

County List:

Rule:

Mixed Forested/Nonforested or Nonforested Landscapes

1st alternative:
      Upland Brush
      or Residential
   containing:
      Mast      

2nd alternative:
      Fields/Pastures
   containing:
      Mast
   adjacent to:
      Edge

Habitat List:

view size class definitions

Literature:

Habitat: Edge habitats in open to partly open situations are favored by mockingbirds. Pastures, farm hedgerows, orchards, isolated shrub patches, and suburban and country gardens are the most common sites chosen for nesting. The diet includes insects, mostly grasshoppers and beetles, and fruit, such as wild grape, raspberry, holly, pokeberry, mulberry, and rose hips.

The nest is usually built in a shrub or low tree, 1 to 2 m above the ground in an open area. Known nest trees in Michigan include spruce, crab apple, hawthorn, American elm, and eastern red cedar. Osage-orange and red cedar are the most commonly used trees for nesting in southern Illinois. In fall and winter they defend a territory centered around a food source from other frugivorous birds.

Habitat: Breeding: Woodland edges, pastures with scattered fruit-bearing shrubs, small trees or groves of large trees, often in cities and habitat. Wintering: Similar to breeding habitat; among thickets that bear persistent fruits, especially multiflora rose.

Special Habitat Requirements: Low, dense woody vegetation, elevated perches, a variety of edible fruits.

Habitat: Towns, farms, roadsides, thickets, brushy areas. Favors areas with dense low shrubs and open ground, either short grass or open soil, thus often common around suburban hedges and lawns. Also in many kinds of second growth, woodland edges, farmland.

Diet: Mostly insects and berries. Annual diet about half insects and other arthropods, half berries and fruits. Feeds heavily on insects in late spring and summer, especially beetles, grasshoppers, caterpillars, ants, wasps, also many others. Also eats spiders, snails, sowbugs, earthworms, and rarely crayfish and small lizards. Fall and winter diets leans heavily to berries and wild fruits, sometimes a few cultivated fruits.

Nest: Placed in a dense shrub or tree usually 3-10 feet above the ground, sometimes lower or higher (rarely up to 60 feet), lined with fine material such as rootlets, moss, animal hair, plant down. Male builds most of foundation, female adds most of the lining.