His Peace and Quiet Screeches to a Halt : Atwitter: A mockingbird shatters a neighborhood’s serenity, and the only help in sight may be--the stork.

It started at 3 o’clock in the morning about a month ago. I thought a flock of screeching birds had landed on my terrace. With visions of Alfred Hitchcock-like eye-pecking ravens dancing in the darkness, I crept out of bed, slunk into the living room and slithered along the floor up to my terrace door. Peering outside into the blackness, I could see nothing. But the noise!

Falling back to sleep was impossible, so I spent the rest of the night watching old cowboy movies punctuated with commercials exhorting me to dial 900 numbers and speak to sultry blondes about my romantic shortcomings. Have romantic shortcomings cornered the insomnia market? Meanwhile, outside in the darkness, the avian symphony was reaching a crescendo.

When the morning sun finally peeked out over the eastern sky, I looked outside, but rather than see a gaggle of feathered friends circling above, there was but a single bird--a puny one no less. He was perched on the antenna of a private home nestled in the center of the semi-circle formed by the four buildings that make up my apartment complex. I walked out on my terrace, as did the 50 or so other baggy-eyed tenants, and stood there, impotently gazing at this noise machine.

“Mockingbird!” the man on the next terrace shouted over me.

“What?!!” I countered.

“MOCKINGBIRD!!!”

Being a recent immigrant from New York City, my bird experience was more or less limited to the soft cooing of pigeons, or “street rats” as they are more commonly dubbed. I always assumed that mockingbirds were fictitious creatures, existing in name only on book jackets, movie titles and James Taylor songs.

Meanwhile, out on their terraces, everyone was now pointing at the bird--some angrily wagging their fingers, as if a collective admonishment would silence him. But there he stood, proudly perched on his antenna, screeching away. He was even so bold as to swoop up into the air 4 or 5 feet, then glide back down, being sure to display the bright white spot under his wings on his descent.

I’ve since become something of an expert on these creatures. They are noisiest in spring, when they are marking their territory and mating. The noise level will supposedly diminish when summer comes and they must feed their young.

But this is little consolation to my neighbors, many of whom are professionals--lawyers, doctors, stockbrokers and business people, your basic movers and shakers who are accustomed to having their way, accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed. Now they’ve been reduced to powerless, bleary-eyed vassals. The collective monthly rent for our ocean view digs must be in the area of fifty thousand dollars, but that means naught to “Feisty” out there on his rent-free antenna.

Not only does Feisty perform his own repertoire, he mimics other birds and is not averse to making humanoid sounds like telephone rings, beepers, sirens and car alarms. And he NEVER sleeps.

At a recent tenants’ meeting (where Feisty took top billing), one woman said she bought an electric fan and leaves it on all night. The fan’s whirdrowned out Feisty and she was actually able to get a full night’s sleep. The following morning, there was a run on fans at our local Home Depot. We bought out every one in stock, to the bewilderment of the manager, who remarked, “Gee, it isn’t even summer yet.”

So here I sit at my typewriter. There is no air in the room. The window is shut tight. It has been that way since Feisty came. The fan drones on, muffling the cacophony of sounds. I read somewhere that when the mockingbird’s mate gives birth, it will quiet down, being too consumed with food gathering to waste energy on noise-making. I await those little beaks pecking their way through their eggshells so I can unplug my fan, open my window and breathe in the clean, quiet, briny air for which I moved 3,000 miles.

But what about next year? Will Feisty’s children be an independent brood, setting up households of their own--hopefully far away from here? Or will they suffer separation anxiety and come knocking on Feisty’s door in the middle of the night?

My fear is that Feisty will have boomerang kids--the ones that keep returning to the nest, so to speak. I envision that a year from now I’ll be surrounded by five or six mockingbirds, each occupying a key position on a nearby utility pole or palm tree and singing their avian version of Beethoven’s Ninth. I envision them mimicking all the alien sounds they hear, as well as mimicking each other. I envision Feisty’s children returning year after year, with children of their own in tow. Each year, more and more, louder and louder.

I envision fleeing back to New York City, where my only noise worries will be screeching fire engines, blaring car horns, cursing taxi drivers, wailing police sirens and burly sanitation workers tossing around huge metal garbage cans like they’re bowling pins at 5 a.m. In others words, a nice peaceful environment.