Yep, my money’s on Decepticon.
Curl-crested Jay
Pedantry: it’s an animal species, so no caps.
That is really impressive. Not on that scale, but the mockingbirds around here in NY do a pretty impressive job of mimicking frogs and insects.
My personal favorite bird is the Uguisu, or Japanese bush warbler. They don’t mimic noises like that bird, but have the most impressive grasp of melody of any bird I’ve heard. They do melody and arpeggios much like in our music. I could identify several individuals in the area I lived in in Japan by their distinct songs, and if I went out in the woods with a flute and played it, the local male would always show up and start singing, so as not to let anyone show him up in his territory. When I mimicked his song, he would sing it again, but go off on a solo at the end, and it would eventually wind up with him going off for a full minute. I’ve also seen this behavior from several different individuals. For all that, I’ve never actually seen one, only heard them.
It’s not good pedantry when there isn’t a standard. For birds there has been lots of variation whether common names are capitalized, and in formal lists like the IOC World Bird List they generally are. You can prefer not to follow them, but it’s not wrong either way.
If this is going to become a collection of more birds that sound like things, I think the camera and motor drive here is a neat one:
FIFY:
You should have been pedantic about the “exotic bird”. It’s only exotic to people who live in, say, the USA, or in Albania.
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