Any tips on discouraging mockingbirds, things that you know for sure work? Please help! The internet is full of unproven ideas. It is the baby mockingbirds that I have a problem with, but to not have the babies, you have to keep away the nesting adults. Every second of every daylight minute, the baby mockingbird gives off a very loud, shrill shriek. (Go to YouTube and search under baby mockingbird for a sample of this little bit of hell. Do not watch the video and be swayed by the cuteness. Just listen. Besides, the cuteness is gone by the time the birds are out of the nest. I can't see them in the nest. The cuteness is irrelevant. They are a little more shrill in real life than they come across in the videos. Imagine that every daylit second for five months.) This goes on for about three weeks per brood and there have been six broods so far this year. Yes, six! I've been listening to this shrieking, and sometimes it can be heard in the house, since mid March and it is now late August. The latest baby is out of the nest and is full grown, but fledged babies will shriek and continue to be fed for, I'm guessing, two weeks.
The shrieking is driving me crazy. Crazy as it may seem, it has impacted my quality of life. I can't even enjoy my own yard and I have to go out and water. So far, all I can do is listen to my iPod with noise-cancelling headphones. Projectiles of any kind are out of the question. The neighbors' houses are too close. No other house in the neighborhood has mockingbirds. We take walks five times a week since January and have never heard or seen one except in our yard or an adjacent yard. We go through what could be the territory of many mockingbirds. Their range is not very large, about one or two acres.
