Pity the poor mockingbird. They are despised for singing all night, chided for being a bully at the feeders, and killed in the title of a famous novel. Surely no bird deserves such persecution? Sadly, the list of injustices that mockingbirds have to suffer through has a new addition: the mange. Poor, poor, mangy mockingbird.
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Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.
It is pitiful, isn’t it? But still not as pitiful as a mangy dog! 😀
He does look mangy, but its not mange. He’s going through his post juvenal molt. You can still see some of the spots on his breast from his juvenal plumage. Adults and juv. mockers here (No. Calif) usually look this way at summers end and early fall when they begin their molt.