Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Garden Visitors - Curve Billed Thrashers

This past summer we put out extra saucers of water around the back yard to help birds and animals weather the drought.  Birds we had not seen here showed up to enjoy our hospitality.  The Curve Billed Thrasher was one of the most striking with their intense yellow eyes and lovely song.
 
This one is fluffy after a bath


 
Another is wary of the camera
 



Up in the tree checking things out before hopping down to the water dish





According to All About Birds the Curve Billed Thrasher is native to the southwest and northern Mexico.  It prefers to live in cactus and spiny brush so they might have spent their summer in the stand of prickly pear and oaks in the back yard.


Update 12/13/2012 - These birds have been identified as Long-Billed Thrashers.  An important difference as they are only found here in south Texas.  Please reference the update here and check Sam Taylor's reply in the comments section.

3 comments:

  1. It seems like many urban gardeners had interesting or unusual vistors to their gardens this summer--except for me! I had the usual suspects, but no one out-of-the ordinary.

    Lucky you to have such nice visitors

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  2. About my favorite bird in Abq! Their sounds are reminiscent of water, and the way the mates help each other, is amazing - she gets twigs or bugs, while he sits on the eggs...then vice-versa. And some nights, they poke in the soil looking for food, too. Those yellow eyes...wow!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks Tina

    DD - That's info I hadn't seen about them, very sweet. Imagine my surprise when I discovered they were typically desert dwellers.

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