Birding from 18 Inches Away: Baby Mockingbird out the Kitchen Window

 Sometimes birders will travel the lengths of the world to get close to our feathered colleagues, but sometimes they appear, well, REALLY close to home. Like outside the kitchen window. There was a commotion this morning in the front yard, a region of our neighborhood mostly given over to Northern Mockingbirds (Mimus polyglottos). It appeared to involve a pair of the aforementioned Mockingbirds and a local cat (not ours, although ours was watching carefully out the window. I checked out the kitchen window and saw this very young chick perched 18 inches away outside the window, pretty much unaware of our presence. I couldn't tell it there was a problem, or if this was just the normal progression of exploring outside the nest (the adult birds have chased the cat away).