Feathered Friend? Would You Believe Screeching Scourge?

Every year about this time, a bird takes up residence in a tree just outside my bedroom window a block off the Sunset Strip and, either by happenstance or design, threatens to drive me out of my mind.

It’s not just that he cackles and screeches rather than tweets.

It’s not just that he seems interested in torturing me only between the hours of 11 p.m. and 5 a.m.

What makes me question my sanity is the way my friends look at me when I tell them that I’m being kept awake by a bird singing the song of a car alarm.

*

I wasn’t sure at first. I’d almost forgotten what those alarms sound like. Their honks and whoops are so commonplace they have become a part of the audio landscape. And it was hard to connect the noise of somebody’s jostled BMW with the evil bird outside my window.

But with all those sleepless nights, I had plenty of time to analyze.

It was an out-of-town house guest who finally confirmed my thesis. She found it hysterical: A bird! In the Car State! Singing like a car alarm!

By 4 a.m., however, she was less amused. The bird had no automatic shut-off, no owner to come rushing out to quiet the ruckus with a button that makes one final chirp.

This bird is determined to finish his alarming song. Closed windows offer no reprieve. (Neither did throwing a few pieces of wrapped candy at his tree--they were the only hard objects I had at my disposal one desperate night.)

He begins his evening concert with a two-note cackle. “LA la LA la LA la LA la,” like a first-grader repeatedly hitting the same two keys on a piano.

Then he changes his tune. Now it’s three notes going up a scale, asking a question over and over (and over): “la La LA? la La LA? la La LA?”

Just when I’m tempted to answer his query with another piece of candy, he switches to a loud buzz. “RNNK.RNNK.RNNK.” Like the soundtrack to a TV game show contestant’s nightmare, in which the player gives several hundred wrong answers in a row.

There are other sounds--a whoop is among the worst. None of them is lulling or pretty or anything else one might wish for from a feathered, nighttime companion.

Even after my careful study, complete with a control group of expensive cars, I had doubters.

But Kimball Garrett, the ornithology collections manager for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, said he had no trouble accepting my theory about the bird’s song.

He even had a name for the Crazy Bird Who Sings Car Alarms.

“They’re called mockingbirds for a reason,” he said.

Oh.

*

Mockingbirds, Garrett explained, mimic other birds and other sounds in their environment and incorporate them into their songs.

On the mockingbird dating circuit, he said, the sexiest males are the ones with the most sounds.

The bird making a mockery out of me probably sings during the day, too, but just isn’t as noticeable, Garrett said.

Los Angeles is full of its own night noises. Before moving here, I’d never been kept up by the loud, fluttering rumbles of a circling police helicopter, waxing and waning as the flying officers bring the bird around, its “FLUTTA-

FLUTTAFLUTTA” growing distant. Seconds later, the whirring grows so loud again I could swear the thing is attempting a landing in my living room.

But I’m given a reprieve soon enough, as it circles out again and, eventually, flies away.

Angelenos also suffer the nighttime howls of the Santa Anas. The fast, warm devil winds might blow all day, but it is at night that their tones take on their most distinct sound, changing pitch as they bend around buildings, seeming almost to form words with their variations in decibel and speed. “aaaaAAAAAAABBBBbbeeee,” they seem to say to me.

But there is something hauntingly intriguing about that sound.

Not the bird. He doesn’t fly away. He doesn’t intrigue.

I’ve come to learn that he stops by about June or so. He disappears the same way he arrives, with no warning. I’ll brace myself for the onslaught one evening and it never comes.

By the time he’s gone, my intense hatred of him has mellowed a bit, so I like to imagine that he has found a girlfriend.

Unfortunately, my mockingbird is not likely to stay with his new belle. He’ll be back.