If you play some very simple pattern around a mockingbird, over and over, I'll bet they would pick it up.
I don’t know. My visiting mocking birds come and go, they don’t tarry long, they’ll let a whistle or two and fly off as though they don’t much care for company.
This year I have a bluebird pair, but haven't noticed any mockingbirds close by. That's unusual. Maybe the two kinds of birds don't get along very well.
When my blue jays hang a round the mocking bird stays afar off. When all birds are gone, he comes in for a snack. But he is an irregular visitor.
@Nancy Hart A side note: Sometime when you’re idle take up a hairpin or something like one, small narrow, maybe a very small screwdriver. Take your old diatonic harmonica, place on a table or desk, holes up. Take your tool or screwdriver and poke it about a half inch into hole six (6), move it a time-or two to the side, toward you, then to the other side. Not hard, but like you were feeling for something but didn’t want to harm or hurt it. Is there any pushback from either side? Regardless, do this a couple times. Pick itup and blow and draw hole six. Any change in sound? Repeat a time or two. May may already be a goner. A plastic comb can be rinced out bt a wooden comp will swell with mosture and ruin it (the rest of the holes). Just try it sometime. What we're trying to do is bring a little life back to hole 6. Probably won't work. Don't try this on your new Harp.
@Bill Boggs I just tried poking around. Didn't help. Need to put it away and move on to the new one. Yes, I definitely wanted plastic. I don't think I'll ever learn to hit these notes cleanly and consistently. One time I might be able to do a scale, and the next 15 times I can't.
Yes, the grass keeps growing and needs mowed. If I had one of those neck contraptions I could practice while mowing. No one would hear.
@Nancy Hart You don't need one. That's for gitars players. It's too early to mess with bending. You've looked at it, that's enough for now. You need somewhere to land, to know what to do. If you next. There is a lot of information on the internet butit's overload, peole trying to sell products or sessions. Not that all of them are bad. I really don't know, I never used any of them, although I did briefly consider consider someone from the university who played, to get me started. After some consideration I decided it was ridiculous for an old man like myself to do so. I'd learn if I could and if not I'd cut my loses and find something else to do but mine came about for medical reasons. I learned to keep from running everyone around me from going crazy or shooting me. My wife would have traded me for a good looking blouse, or two dinners at Red Lobster. We'll come up with a plan. I know you're disappointed, You're ahead of schedule. Take a break. You're doing alright
I've been sitting in my office this morning, with harmonica in hand, reading the forum, making an occasional comment, or giving a like, thinking and playing as I read. I don't always remember songs I once knew and liked or didn't. But since it is habit with me, I go up and down my harp each morning, pulling air into my lungs and blowing it out, which is normal for most people with lung problems. Been playing OH Suzanna, Oh McDonald had a farm, Green, Green Grass of Home, When The Saints Go Marching In, and thinking of Louie Armstrong, and others. Just playing, soft and low. My wife has a stong hearing aid and although I close my door, I don't play loud unless I'm outside, but seldom find the need to play loud. Playing not only helps feed my need for a little more oxygen, but is a source of relaxation and satisfaction, that I'm doing something finally I have wanted to do since my teenage days when I ran with a bunch of rag-tag musicians who actually got pretty good. I tagged along, playing nothing like an extra thumb. I wish I'd learned to play much earlier but conditions were not right and I didn't have the want to or the knowledge I could learn. The harmonica is not much liked by everyone, nor is the trumpet or the bagpipes or many other instruments but some more tolerated than others. From my youth through the eighties, maybe early nineties in some place, the music scene was wide open. Clubs sprouted up everywhere. These dens of iniquity, as some thought them, provided musicians a place to play, earn a few bucks. They already knew how to drink if that was their bent. The harmonica was always a great accomplishment instrument from the front porch days of my earliest youth till it started dying out again in the late eighties and nineties. Well, so much for my comments and thoughts here in my cubby hole. And since few folks read stuff written down here in the cellar, I'm free to leave my little hole in the wall. No, no, it's my wide spot in the road, and in my imagination, roam about the country, where now it is raining, sprinkling and has been all morning. If it storms tonight, as predicted, I'll comeback down here and ride it out till it's over. Good day.
Not as much bad weather as we used to have. Once upon a time tornados roamed about Oklahoma looking for victims, like trailer parks. mobil homes set back in the country, hiding out like little loners but sought out out by vicious storms coming in on a massive cloud storm sixty thousand feet high. They overlooked everything as they move in with high wind, hail, and hundreds of lightning strikes. Then it would get real still, the wind would stop, the closest clouds would be a green shade of colorand a squad of tornadoes, little ones, like planes from a flight deck somewhere, would desend out of the clouds, surrounding a larger tornado looking, looking for targets, and like some dive-bomber here it would come. You'd almost think some one was taking to it, like, "Mobil home on the left, trailer park straight, large farm beyond trailer park. Let's get 'em. Don't sound reasonable but I swear they'll hunt you out sometime.. Okalahoma has , still, a lot of storms. So many, in fact, that they pace a notation in your homeowner's insurance policy to justify such high rates in the state. Take a listen, I have a small, 782 square home, built in 1947 when Navy had a base in Norman, Oklahoma. It has been kept up but it is in an older part of town now. One of my great grand daughters came to visit and asked if it was a safe neighborhood. She had never been in such a low class area before. But back to my story. My home owners insurance this year was $1518.00. Everyone tells me that's high. If I had had this situation out in Lubbock where I lived for forty-seven years, It would a little more than twice as high., which seems more reasonable to me. But Oklahoma has so many storms and so many are so destructive, for several years nobody, no company wanted too insure homes in Oklahoma. Now that many storms have moved a little further east, companiess have come back but it still cost you a pretty penny.