Many moods of a Brown Thrasher

Drew mentioned how striking the eyes of the thrasher were.

Wicked cool! We just had a brown thrasher visit our suet feeder today! Drew happened to be looking out the kitchen window when he noticed a bird that he had never seen before. It stayed around for quite awhile, knoshing on suet, giving Drew time to snap several photos through the window glass so as not to scare him off. Yahoo!

Let's look at characteristics of this member of the Family Mimidae. Thrashers are basically solitary and would be observed on the ground most of the time. That it was up on the feeder was surprising to me. The brown color of the bird is referred to as "rufous" colored. The breast is streaked.

Drew's first mention of the bird was it's long, pointed beak and long tail. These birds forage on the ground and use their long bill to turn leaves over and to scrape the dirt to find food. They tend to run on the ground with their tails raised. Later, we both saw it on the ground behind our bird feeder where there is a thicket of blackberry vines and other shrubby plants. By the way, they spend the summer in Maine for the breeding season.

Being members of the Mimidae family, they have a lovely range of musical sounds. Click the link below to go to the All About Birds website to listen to their songs and calls.

The male sings a loud, long series of doubled phrases with no definite beginning or end, described by some people as “plant a seed, plant a seed, bury it, bury it, cover it up, cover it up, let it grow, let it grow, pull it up, pull it up, eat it, eat it.”  https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Brown_Thrasher/sounds