The Genius of Birds

by Jennifer Ackerman

If you happened to find yourself at the foot of the stairs in the White House on a typical afternoon sometime around 1804 or 1805, you might have noticed a perky bird in a pearl-gray coat ascending the steps behind Thomas Jefferson, hop by hop, as the president retired to his chambers for a siesta. This was Dick. Although the president didn’t dignify his pet mockingbird with one of the fancy Celtic or Gallic names he gave his horses and sheepdogs—Cucullin, Fingal, Bergère—still it was a favorite pet. “I sincerely congratulate you on the arrival of the Mocking bird,” Jefferson wrote to his son-in-law, who had informed him of the advent of the first resident mockingbird. “Learn all the children to venerate it as a superior being in the form of a bird.” Dick may well have been one of the two mockingbirds Jefferson bought in 1803. These were pricier than most pet birds ($10 or $15 then—around $125 now) because their serenades included not only renditions of all the birds of the local woods, but also popular American, Scottish, and French songs. Not everyone would pick this bird for a friend. Wordsworth called him the “merry mockingbird.” Brash, yes. Saucy and animated. But merry? His most common call is a bruising tschak!—a kind of unlovely avian expletive that one naturalist described as a cross between a snort of disgust and a hawking of phlegm. But Jefferson adored Dick for his uncommon intelligence, his musicality, and his remarkable ability to mimic. As the president’s fr...