Hi All,

Charlie Vaughn's comments about mockingbirds imitating waterbird calls they
had learned miles away from where they were heard being uttered reminded me
of another mockingbird anecdote I heard from Austin, Texas native Frank
Oatman. It seems there once was a mocker in Austin that gave wonderful
renditions of Great Kiskadee and Green Jay hundreds of miles north of the
ranges of those Rio Grande Valley specialties.

I have heard a mocker in my home atlas block producing Virginia Rail and
Brown-headed Nuthatch calls. I have yet to find the rail any closer than the
Rock Hall area over 12 miles away from here. There are no historic nesting
records from Kent County  for Brown-headed Nuthatch (although Jim Brighton's
17 April  in-safe- dates Eastern Neck NWR observation bears a follow-up).

Mockers are lots of fun, but they can make doing BBS routes and atlas
miniroutes awfully tricky sometimes.

Good Birding,

Walter Ellison

23460 Clarissa Road
Chestertown, MD 21620
phone: 410-778-9568
e-mail: 

"A person who is looking for something doesn't travel very fast" - E. B.
White (in "Stuart Little")

"Are there *ever* enough birds?" - Connie Hagar as quoted by Edwin Way Teale
in "Wandering through Winter"