Scientific Name: Mimus polyglottos
Residency: Year-round resident throughout Arizona.
Diet: Eats insects, crayfish, lizards, small snakes, wild fruits and berries. Feeds mainly upon insects and fruit (fruits make up 50% of the diet). Mockingbirds forage mostly upon the ground, flashing their wing bars to startle prey into movement and then lunging after them. May come to bird feeder for raisins, other fruit, or bread.
Predators: Sharp-shinned Hawks, Loggerheaded Shrikes and Great-horned Owl. Snakes and squirrels will eat eggs.
Nesting: Male Northern Mockingbirds build several nests, from which the female picks one and lines it with grasses. The female then lays two to six bluish eggs that are spotted brown, all of which are incubated by both the male and female (1-3 broods per year). Nest is made of twigs, mosses, plant stems, cloth, string, and dry leaves lined with rootlets and grasses. Nest is in a shrub, vine tangle, cactus or tree 3-10 feet off the ground.
Nesting Records: Scottsdale Community College.
Notes: They form territories of 1-2 acres, 2 times a year. The mockingbird is a natural pest controller in its ecosystem, controlling populations of insects, which it eats in large quantities. This bird also serves as a seed disperser for plants, as it eats a variety of fruits and berries. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries a strong market for caged mockingbirds rendered the species nearly extinct in many large cities, but today however, the mockingbird?s populations seem to have stabled, and even flourished in sub-urbanized areas.
