washing the dishes like it was a pet. A pair always makes a nest in one of the nearby trees every year. I think he is one of the younger offshoots.

Mockingbirds, like some humans, stop singing all night once they've paired up.

They do stake out territories, and a persistent bachelor will tend to hang around in one place for what can seem like an eternity (if it is near your bedroom window) before trying another spot. We had one last year that drove the whole neighborhood bananas. Cute guy, though, and had a repertoire of about 25 calls.

A lot of them do car alarms now:

They are European and SW Asian species.

throwing tennis balls at one persistent one once. It didn't do any good. They like to sing at night and they have such a variety of sounds too.

Well, best of luck. I hope he doesn't get shot. But for your sake I hope he moves on.

I read about a mocking bird that could imitate cell phone rings, you know the old ones before the smart phone.

Unfortunately, there is little you can do until he finds a mate.

However, there are a few things you can do to amuse yourself in the meantime. If, for example, your car has a remote lock which makes a chirp noise, you can do that several times a night, and see if be adds it to his greatest hits collection. Or, just go outside and whistle something.

doesn't fall off the branch.

And no one has drawn down on him yet.

...is the mockingbird scene. I snipped that scene from the movie and my daughters still get a kick out of it.

Perhaps we should gun down the gunners of innocents.

wheeee, wheee, ahh-ahh-ahh, whe-oh, whe-oh, coming from atop the power pole behind my house for hours.

And yes, the thought of shooting the annoying little fucker has crossed my mind. OTOH, it is pretty impressive that the bird can imitate the sound so accurately that you don't know it is the bird until you actually see the bird.

They are protected migratory birds under federal law.

It drove us crazy the first time we heard it because we couldn't find the freaking phone that was ringing. We soon found that it was coming from the back yard. We searched for the freaking phone there. We finally figured out that it was a mockingbird when it changed its song while we were looking at it.

He was indeed a cutie. But he drove us crazy for an hour or so.

He's been coming back to my yard for years and years. It's been so long that I suspect it's been more than one bird learning our songs from the other. He's pretty aggressive in his singing, but I haven't seen any aggressive moves to bother anything larger than the bothersome Blue-Jays who like to try and bully their way around (and steal eggs).

He didn't come the year after my father died, but the following year he came back, and, perched on a low branch above me, we both shared our year's experience together (in crazy song) for about a half-hour until I was exhausted. He never tires of singing out, though. And he's louder than the rest. He's taken to spotting me at the window at my computer, and, last year I startled him away from our outside gazebo because he was just so loud and annoying I couldn't hear myself think.

I called out to this little fellow when I first moved into my house and put the woodland garden together, because I had had a mockingbird friend years before and the call sounded just like his.

The bird that I had a relationship with many years ago had woken me in the middle of the night outside my courtyard townhouse window, a little fellow, I think. I tried to coo him back to sleep, but he'd found the friend he'd been looking for. He awoke every single night afterward and would just disrupt the neighborhood until I talked to him (and that took a while at that to shut him down). He was a night singer for years afterward - returning for three successive summers, until one year when he didn't return. He wasn't missed in that courtyard by many (I missed him).

The next summer I heard a call outside the window -- it was weaker than my friend's, but unmistakably in the range of our songs. Then I heard his call and I realized at once that he'd brought back a mate who had adopted parts of our melody. Lots of noise from them both outside in the trees for that day and then night fell.

Hours into the night, I heard the unmistakable song of my catbird friend coming from an alcove across the street and echoing like never before throughout the neighborhood. He wasn't just singing, he was trilling in several octaves at once like something out of Star Wars.

I went to the small tree where my friend was and he just exploded in the most incredible song I have ever heard. He wouldn't let me make a sound over his own incredible one and it was so overwhelming that I ended up on my butt in tears.

He was speaking of love - that was unmistakable - but also, there was a bittersweet sadness in his melody which cut right through me. It went on, seemingly forever, until he just stopped abruptly and flew away. I never heard from him again. What a lucky man I was to have experienced that.

Mockingbirds and catbirds do obsess on us when we interact with them. Best not to attract too much of their attention, I think. Better to let them get on with the business of interacting appropriately with their bird partners. Best to not encourage too much of our own compromised humanness in their expression. Better to just listen to them.

None such in Minnesota. For most of my life I lived in CA, and listened to the night song of the mockingbirds. I loved it. It would actually help me go to sleep. I'd listen to the ever-changing song and try to see if there was a repeating pattern. I never found out, because I would always go to sleep somewhere in the middle of the cycle.

When I was a young kid, I taught the mockingbird outside my bedroom window a new song by whistling. It didn't take long before it was repeating it as part of its repertory. Love those mockingbirds!

hearing pretty songs at night. Don't get me wrong, it can be annoying. But the only birds I hear at night are owls, and they can be unnerving.

When millions of mammals, birds, amphibians and insects are desperately trying to get laid, usually very loudly and often right outside your window.