Natural History Wanderings

The Scientific American reports

Listen to the mockingbird. This bird makes a lot of noise. He copies all sorts of other bird songs, repeating, repeating, over and over, sometimes for hours. People must have thought this behavior was vaguely insulting to other birds, else we wouldn’t have named this one the mockingbird.

But now, listen more closely. You’ll hear that this virtuoso bird isn’t just copying other species’ tunes. He’s sampling them like a DJ and transposing, bending, tweaking them into his own quite deliberate form. We can always tell it’s a mockingbird, not because of his copying, but because of his unique and specific way of composing music out of the material he hears in the world around him.

Read full article at  Mockingbirds Are Better Musicians Than We Thought