DATE: Thursday, April 17, 1997              TAG: 9704170362

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B2   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL

                                            LENGTH:   61 lines

MAD MOCKINGBIRD STANDS HIS GROUND AGAINST INTERLOPERS

The Mad Mockingbird is holding this newspaper under siege.

You may ask, is he mad angry or mad crazy? Both!

The Mad Mocker and his mate built a nest 10 feet up a tree near the building's side entrance.

Hundreds of people trek daily through the company's parking lot, bent on entering the double doors under the east portico, only to have the mocker launch an attack, now and then, from above.

He would remain hidden if he didn't explode from the leaves as if catapulted from an aircraft carrier.

That brave bird can't help it. It's in his genes to protect his mate, the nest, the young, the tree - the whole parking lot, if need be.

He couldn't have found a worse site than the lot in downtown Norfolk, although it is brightened by 20 trees and ample shrubs.

He had to be the Pavarotti of the bird world to persuade his mate to settle here. But mockingbirds love to mingle with human beings. We divert them probably. Only while raising a family do they feel impelled to take on the world.

Describing in 1844 the bird's unlikely home sites, John James Audubon reported one with a nest between the rails of a wood fence beside a main road.

In a painting in ``The Birds of America,'' he portrayed three mockers defending a nest against a cavernous-mouthed snake.

He noted that the Coopers hawk, flying low swiftly, is adept at snatching the mocker. But if the hawk misses its prey, the mocker turns and pursues him ``with great courage,'' joined by others of his kind, setting off a general alarm.

Late Saturday, in one of his first forays, the mocker swooped behind me from the tree perch and brushed my sleeve. He made four other passes as I walked along. He uttered a low sound as if striking the deepest note on a bass fiddle.

Next day, when security guard Sterling Marshall walked by, the bird dived and stuck the back of his neck lightly.

The mocker continues his security patrol. While startling, his aerial flourishes do no damage.

What concerns me is that his active vigil distracts him from the vital task of finding insects and fruit to feed his mate and their offspring. Under severe disturbance, a pair will, at times, desert a nest and seek a home elsewhere.

The beautiful gray birds with white wing patches bless this block of a building with their song.

``What we oughta do,'' I told colleague Beth Bergman, ``is all of us simply use the front door on Brambleton Avenue until the fledglings hatch and take flight.''

She liked the notion. What I didn't divulge then is that mockingbirds produce two or three broods a season.

Always tell the truth, a little bit at a time. ILLUSTRATION: Painting

READER'S DIGEST

Mockingbirds are notoriously scrappy when defending their nests.

Several people entering the newspaper's downtown Norfolk office have

been dive-bombed by one of the tenacious birds, whose nest is

nearby.

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