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While riding over Virginia’s rural roads in February, I am always alert for mockingbirds. I often see one perched silent, wary and watchful in clumps of multiflora rose, catbriar, Japanese honeysuckle and bittersweet; those plants, mostly vines, that tangle among themselves along roadways.
When I return next day or even a week later, the mockingbird will be in the same place. He is guarding his winter food supply. All the native and introduced vines that crowd along country roads produce berries that nourish a mockingbird and see him through winter weather.
The mockingbird, Mimus polyglottos — the mimic of many tongues — so vocal in spring, summer and even autumn, is silent in winter. He is a fierce guardian of his food supply and will attack any creature that dares to take aim at his berries whether ’they be blue-black in privet, catbriar, or honeysuckle or red-orange in the introduced bittersweet.
Mimus watching is a favorite occupation when I am tired of thei grays and browns of winter and even the reassuring greens of pines give little pleasure. I am impatient for signs of spring and the turning of the year.
It is only along two-lane country roads that I see this gray and white master of bird song. There the vegetation crowds the roadsides and it is easy to see the birds perched alert and ready to fly in fury at any bird that dares to covet his berries.
Holly trees heavy with red
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