{"id":1010,"date":"2014-08-11T21:50:41","date_gmt":"2014-08-12T02:50:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2014\/08\/11\/140811-mockingbirdnest\/"},"modified":"2022-03-28T09:19:53","modified_gmt":"2022-03-28T14:19:53","slug":"140811-mockingbirdnest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2014\/08\/11\/140811-mockingbirdnest\/","title":{"rendered":"Mockingbirdlets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I discovered a mockingbird nest in the lower limbs of the Chinese pistache planted in our back yard. I had been hearing odd chirps coming at fairly regular intervals over the preceding few days, but didn&#8217;t really think anything about it until Saturday afternoon when I noticed some unusually persistent mockingbird presence around the tree.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I took a chance (the last time we had a mockingbird nest in our yard, <a href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2005\/03\/31\/mimus-polyglottos-and-terror-from-above\/\">I had to wear a motorcycle helmet<\/a> to protect myself while mowing the lawn) and took a quick glance inside the foliage. Sure enough, there was a typical crudely built nest holding two sleeping mockingbirdlets. The parents weren&#8217;t happy about the intrusion, but they exhibited remarkable restraint and I was able to back away unscathed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid #ccc;\" src=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/mockingbirdmama.jpg\" alt=\"A mockingbird warns me away from its nesting babies\"><\/p>\n<p>I thought you might enjoy seeing a little nature in action, so I made the following video from footage taken on Saturday with a GoPro camera on the end of a monopod, and some additional footage from a Canon video camera that I shot this evening, as a sort of follow-up to the tale. (Note: If you watched this video on Sunday via <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/ericsiegmund\">my Vimeo account<\/a>, you might want to take another look, as I&#8217;ve replaced that movie with this slightly extended version that details some slightly troubling developments.)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/103096222\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Toward the end of the footage shot this evening, one of the adults did take a dive at me, but I think it was just a warning shot out of habit, given that the nest is empty. I&#8217;d really like to know what happened to the second baby, but it was starting to rain and I didn&#8217;t have a chance to take a good look at all the potential hiding places in our back yard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I discovered a mockingbird nest in the lower limbs of the Chinese pistache planted in our back yard. I had been hearing odd chirps coming at fairly regular intervals over the preceding few days, but didn&#8217;t really think anything about it until Saturday afternoon when I noticed some unusually persistent mockingbird presence around the tree.&nbsp;&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2014\/08\/11\/140811-mockingbirdnest\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Mockingbirdlets<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wildlife-birds","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1010"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9205,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010\/revisions\/9205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}