Mimus polyglottos
Northern Mockingbirds are medium-sized with gray upperparts, lighter gray underparts, a pale eye lines, white chins and throats with gray-brown sub-malar streaks. Wings are gray-black with two white bars and have they have large white patches when spread. Tail is long, gray and edged with white. They have black bills and yellowish eyes.
All in all, as 2018 comes to a close I realize how fortunate I am to see all the birds that I do throughout the year as a bird photographer, to be able to do what I love and to love my feathered subjects too.
Some days one good bird is all I get and if I hadn't spotted this cooperative Mockingbird on a Fragrant Sumac in northern Utah yesterday I would have been mostly skunked.
The birds I photographed on the wild rose bushes were adult and immature Sage Thrashers, an adult White-crowned Sparrow and one beautiful Northern Mockingbird.
It was nice to photograph this Northern Mockingbird singing in between the clouds and rain yesterday on Antelope Island State Park.
I have seen and heard more Northern Mockingbirds this year on Antelope Island State Park than any previous year since I moved to Utah.
When I lived in Florida I saw Northern Mockingbirds all the time but they are not so common here in Utah and typically I only see a pair or two during the whole breeding season.
Yesterday I photographed a mixture of the birds of Antelope Island State Park and had great fun while doing it.
A Loggerhead Shrike flew into a sagebrush and right after that I could hear a bird that sounded upset. The upset bird was this Northern Mockingbird.