Mocking birds singing for mates

BOCA RATON, Fla., May 29 (UPI) -- It's mating season for mocking birds and they have arrived in South Florida, where the feathered lovers sing for a mate ... and sing and sing, one family says.

Kristine Collins told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel her family lost some sleep last week when a mockingbird perched outside their bedroom windows and wouldn't stop singing.

"It was incredibly loud and a really cheerful little tune, but it went on all night long," said Collins, who lives in the Baybury neighborhood west of Boca Raton. "I don't know how that little bird had enough energy to do it for two straight nights."

The bird, which the family calls Tweetie, was undeterred by the family's efforts to quiet it.

"My daughter was banging on her window and the bird just would not stop," Collins said. "I told the kids to sleep on the other side of the house, but we turned on fans to drown out the noise."

There is a way to get the mocking bird to stop singing, but not permanently.

"When people ask me how to make a mockingbird stop singing, I tell them to find him a girlfriend," said Rick Newman, a conservation biologist at Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton. "The males protect their territory and keep on singing until they find a mate."