Inspector admits being fooled by police siren bird

A police inspector has told the BBC how he was the first to be tricked by a bird mimicking the sound of a siren.

Simon Hills said the two-tone impression had officers believing a car was faulty at Thames Valley Police’s Bicester station in Oxfordshire.

But following investigations, the culprit was found to be a bird.

The local wildlife trust said the male blackbird was making the noise to both attract a mate as well as warn other males away from its territory.

Insp Hills, from the roads policing unit, said: “I sat at my desk after a weekend off and in the distance I could hear the faint sound of what sounded like a police siren and, because we repair a lot of police cars here, I thought it was maybe one that was defective and the battery was starting to go flat.”

First in the pecking order to hear the tones, was roads policing inspector Simon Hills

“I came outside and looked up into the trees and I could see the bird up in the trees, clearly mimicking the sirens in a really professional way.”

When asked whether the “jailbird” should be arrested for impersonating a police car, Insp Hills said: “If it starts to put a uniform on and use some of its policing powers then we might have to look at it.”

Other followers on X, formerly known as Twitter, replied asking if the bird was part of “special branch” or the “flying squad”.

Phil Bruss, from Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust, said: “The purpose of the birdsong is to achieve two major things for the blackbird, it’s trying to advertise its fitness to a mate, to the females, and it’s also trying to warn other males out of its territory.

“So it’s effectively a combination of sitting at the top of the tree shouting chat-up lines and also chanting ‘come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough’.”

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