Where there's one brown thrasher this time of year, there's usually a family, so I assume that his mate is also present along with two to five eggs or nestlings. I've seen only one thrasher at a time and have guessed it's the male simply because the females are more secretive - but the sexes look alike, so I can't be sure.
A brown thrasher is a big songbird, 11.5 inches long (1.5 inches longer than a robin). Much of the thrasher's size is in its long tail, which the bird flourishes expressively - pointing straight down while the male perches to sing, tipping and tilting as the bird walks and hops across the ground, flicking raffishly as the thrasher makes its short flights, ending with a glide and a swoop up into a bush or down onto the ground.
The thrasher's back and tail are bright, rich, rusty brown; the eyes are pale yellow; the bill curves down; and the pale underparts are heavily streaked with black. It looks a little like a wood thrush, but the thrasher is much bigger, its tail is longer and the wood thrush has spots instead of streaks underneath. Young brown thrashers look much like the adults, but are buffier colored and have gray eyes.
Thrashers are in the same family as mockingbirds and catbirds - the family called Mimidae, for the members' propensity to mimic the songs and calls of other birds. Of the three mimids in our region, the brown thrasher is the largest - catbirds measure perhaps 8.5 inches long, mockingbirds about 10. All have longer-than-average tails.
One evening this week, I sat by the road in my car, hoping in vain to hear the thrasher sing. Silent though he was, he certainly wasn't shy - strolling and hopping through the grassy meadow near his fence-row, foraging for food. Thrashers eat mostly bugs, especially beetles, along with berries and nuts such as acorns.
In the brushy wood edges where thrashers often appear, they sweep the leaf litter with quick sidewise motions of the bill, stopping occasionally to pick up food or to probe into the ground. Sometimes they flycatch from perches; sometimes they eat little frogs, snakes and salamanders; for their young, they gather earthworms and soft grubs.
The song I had hoped to hear is similar to the songs of catbird and mockingbird, but mellower than the catbird, lower-pitched and "fruitier" than the mocker. Many of the books say that catbirds sing a phrase once; thrashers, twice; and mockers, many times - I wanted to hear that for myself but instead I watched the thrasher while listening to a mocker, singing loudly from a wire across the road. Brown thrashers utter a variety of calls; the most familiar is a kissing noise, "tchuck."
After the second nesting of the summer, our brown thrashers will fall silent; by mid-October, they will be gone - but not far. Scientists believe that thrashers don't migrate very far south of their particular nesting grounds, somewhere between 30 and 300 miles. Since brown thrashers are seen in winter in southern Delaware and southern New Jersey, my Mercer Mill Road bird may not have far to fly.
During nesting season, watch for brown thrashers around dense shrubs, especially shrubs with thorns - they love to nest in rose bushes. My neighborhood bird is in a row of other shrubs favored by thrashers - forsythia and privet with honeysuckle twining through. Thrasher are bulky cups of twigs, dry leaves, grass and rootlets, built on the ground at the base of a tree or shrub, or placed in a fork or tangle 3 to 7 feet above ground. Male and female share the duties of incubating eggs and feeding the family.
|
|
