By NANCY JANE KERN
IF YOU ARE DRIVING on one of our narrower, quieter, country roads and a fairly large, rusty-colored bird quickly flies across in front of you, it is probably a brown thrasher. For a size comparison, the cardinal is 8 1/2” long while the brown thrasher is 11”. The thrasher is an elusive bird, so don’t expect to stop and easily locate it. The best way to see it is to go back in the evening and quietly wait for it to sit on top of a bushy thicket, or a tangle of multiflora rose cane. It will probably be found by listening for its loud song reminiscent in quality to a northern mockingbird but without the repeating of so many other birds’ songs.
The thrasher will occasionally mimic a few birds like the northern cardinal, tufted titmouse, or northern flicker. Some describe the song 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, yum-yum.” It repeats each change of pitch and phrase twice and keeps on singing. Some researchers have recorded it continuously singing over a thousand phrases, much more than the mockingbird, which usually comes to mind when we think of prize songsters. This credit should belong to the brown thrasher. Somehow though, singing “Listen to the brown thrasher” doesn’t come across as well as “Listen to the Mockingbird.”
Once located on its perch the thrasher is recognized by its rufous head, back, and tail, heavily dark-streaked white breast and buff-colored belly. The streaking can be irregular and spotty. The bird characteristically points its tail down while singing. I usually watch them through binoculars and the feature that catches my eye is the thrasher’s piercing pale yellow eye which seems to bore straight through me. Thrasher is believed to be derived from the word thrush, although it is not a thrush. Thrashers are related to the mockingbirds and catbirds and are found in the family Mimidae (mimics). I think of the thrasher as describing their feeding behavior of “thrashing” their head side to side to move leaf litter to find food. I admire brown thrashers for their ability to recognize brown-headed cowbird eggs and take action. Cowbirds do not make nests but lay their eggs in other birds’ nests. They often lay them in the thrashers’ nests and the thrashers are clever enough to chuck most of the cowbird eggs out. Possibly they recognize the darker, more heavily spotted cowbird eggs.
There is frequent debate about whether we should interfere and remove cowbird eggs from nests. Legally, cowbirds are a native species so their eggs are protected. Brown thrashers are mostly insect eaters in the first part of the spring and then switch to berry eating in the summer and fall. Leftover rose hips on the multiflora roses will be eaten in the spring. The photo shows the thrasher in a large tangle of multiflora cane. For the winter they migrate south and concentrate in areas of Texas. Of the several thrasher species, brown thrashers are found in the eastern part of the country. So move over brash mockingbird, the brown thrasher may be shier than you, but he is bigger and the true top songster of our bird world.
