And My Bird Can Sing

For a few weeks now there has been a bird sitting in the tree in my garden. It is visually unremarkable - brown, medium-sized - but it makes the most incredible noise, whistling and shouting for hours at a time. It's not birdsong so much as a weird incongruous collection of sounds, a sort of Space Invaders Tourettes: it seems compelled to pour forth, incessantly.

I've grown used to it. So much so that I would go so far as to say that I like it. I certainly miss it when the damn thing's not there. 

Today I found out that it is a Mockingbird, such a common thing in these parts that it is the state bird of no less than five states (Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas), but, of course, utterly unknown in Europe and therefore exotic and wonderful to me.