Brown Thrasher

The Brown Thrasher is a large bird able to skulk and remain hidden in shrubby tangles and thickets. It is a year round resident of the southeastern US, also breeds from the southern Prairie Provinces, central and southern Ontario, southwestern Quebec, the eastern US and prairie states. It winters in eastern Texas. They are the only thrasher east of the Rockies and central Texas.

Adult Male (spring/summer)

Crown is bright rufous; supercilium and auriculars brownish gray; submoustachial stripe cream; malar stripe brown and buffy breast and flanks with thin dark streaks. Back and tail bright rufous; wings bright rufous with buffy wing bars top edged with dark brown. The bird is long and slender with long tail. Bill is large and down curved. Eyes are glaring yellow-orange.

Adult Female (spring/summer)

Similar to adult males.

Juvenile

Juvenile looks similar to adult, but upperparts with indistinct buff spotting with buffy wingbars and dull grayish eyes.

General:

Long, slender songbird. Length: 23-30cm. Wing: 29-32cm. Weight: 61-89grams.

Behaviour:

Notoriously difficult to see, the Brown Thrasher is a retiring type that prefers to skulk in thickets and heavy brush. They search for insects and seeds in dry leaves on the ground using the long, curved bill to sweep leaf litter and soil away. They also forage in clusters of dead leaves on trees, eat fruit from berry bushes, seeds from stems and insects in the air.

Habitat:

Breeds in brushy open country, thickets, shelterbelts, riparian areas, and suburbs in the east. It winters in hedgerows, gardens, thickets, and brushy woodland edges.

Information:

The Brown Thrasher is sometimes called the Brown Thrush but is in fact a species of thrasher, part of the family Mimidae that includes catbirds and mockingbirds. They have the greatest vocal repertoire of all birds being able to sing up to 3000 distinct songs. The male sings a series of short repeated melodious phrases from an open perch to defend his territory and is also very aggressive in defending the nest, known to strike people and animals near the nest. This bird raises two or even three broods in a year. The female lays 3 to 5 eggs in a bulky cup made of twigs, lined with leaves and grass with an inner lining of rootlets. The nest is built in a dense shrub or low in a tree often protected by thorns. Both parents incubate and feed the young.
The longevity record for Brown Thrasher is 11 years and 11 months.

Similar species:

Conservation Status:

Listed as Least Concern,
populations are thought to be declining slowly throughout the range, with habitat loss and degradation being the main cause as shrub lands mature in the East and fencerows are eliminated in the Great Plains.

Capture Rates

Brown Thrasher is a vagrant to BC with a single capture at the Colony Farm banding station.

Molt Summary:

PF: HY partial (Jul-Sep), PB: AHY complete (Jul-Aug); PA absent.
PBs occur on the summer grounds.
Preformative molt includes 2-9 inner gr covs and usually 1-3 terts, but no rects

Juveniles have the upperparts usually with indistinct, buff spotting, loosely textured undertail coverts, and a gray to grayish-olive iris. Juvenile M=F

Molt limits occur among the gr covs, the retained outer covs worn and pale cinnamon-rufous, contrasting with the fresher, darker and rufous-based, replaced inner covs; 1-3 tertials usually replaced, contrasting with the older , juvenal middle ss, or if the juvenal terts are retained , these are tipped buff (fall) and relatively abraded (spring); outer pp covs narrow, tapered, relatively abraded and rufous-brown with pale buff tips when fresh; outer rects tapered and relatively abraded; iris brownish to grayish yellow (through March).

Wing covs and terts uniformly adult; the gr covs deep rufous at the base (beware of pseudolimit among outer covs), the terts tipped whitish (fall) and relatively fresh (spring); outer pp covs broad, truncate, relatively fresh, and rufous-dusky to uniformly deep rufous; outer rects truncate and relatively fresh; iris yellow to yellowish-orange.