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Living Up to Their Name
Written By: William McReynolds - Highlands Plateau Audubon Society | Issue: October 2024
This busy bird feeds on the forest floor where it creates a stir by upending leaves to look under them for insects.
This common songbird is slightly larger and more streamlined than a robin.
The Brown Thrasher (Toxostoma rufum) has a cinnamon brown back, long prominent tail, piercing yellow eyes and thrush-like striped breast and belly. Male and female sport similar plumage.
They forage on the ground floor of the forest, vigorously thrashing through fallen leaves in search of insects.
These birds are distinguished from Wood Thrush with similar plumage in that the Wood Thrush has a much shorter tail and black eyes. The songs are also quite different.
The male Brown Thrasher is a prodigious songster, having the largest vocal repertoire of North American birds with 1,100 distinguishable songs. (Ornithologists and hobbyist bird watchers are inveterate counters.) When it sings from its extensive songbook, it emits clear musical phrases that get repeated, seemingly for emphasis.
Busy ground feeders, Brown Thrashers will pause their foraging on the forest floor periodically to survey their surroundings. In doing so, they strike a still, upright pose easily sighted and identified. This statuesque pose is what my camera caught in the accompanying photo.
They are year-rounders here on the Plateau, their number rising in the winter as some northern birds of their kind migrate south to the Carolinas when the weather turns cold.
They breed here in spring and summer. Both female and male build a cup nest and usually raise two broods in a nesting season. Four or five pale blue, speckled eggs are incubated by both female and male of the species for 11 days to two weeks. Both parents also feed the hatchlings. Fledging occurs after 10-13 days. Insects and fruit appear most often on the menu.
Happy October birding from the Highlands Plateau Audubon Society. Look for these birds low down in the forest, in the thick underbrush and among the ground leaves.
The mission of the Highlands Plateau Audubon Society is to provide opportunities to enjoy and learn about birds and other wildlife and to promote conservation and restoration of the habitats that support them. HPAS is a 501 (c)(3) organization and a chapter of the National Audubon Society. Visit highlandsaudubonsociety.org for information on membership and all activities.
