not alot of bird action going on down here, mostly the same birds everyday this is one that I see all the time but still don't know what kind it is


noemi
south texas

The most common Thrasher in your area is probably the Brown Thrasher - but that bird is typically a rich rufous color, without the extensive gray that your bird is showing on the head and shoulders. The only really grayish thrasher is the Long-billed Thrasher, which is what I'm guessing this is (gray face, black bill and appears to shade into brown on the back). However, what is unusual is that the chest streaking is brown, not black, and the chest itself looks smudgy and buffy, not clear white. The bird has the orange eyes of an adult, but the chest plumage looks more like juvenal patterning?

I actually wonder if there's a chance this is a hybrid or an aberrant, perhaps melanistic, Brown Thrasher instead of a Long-billed. A Long-billed should show a white chest with contrasting black streaking - this bird is buffy with dark brown streaking. It's not adding up for me, but I am far from an expert on Texas thrashers. You might want to show this to some good local birders and get their opinion. It just seems odd to me for either a Brown or a Long-billed Thrasher - but thrasher it clearly is.

Jill

Benton, ME
Canon Digital Rebel XT
Canon EF70-300 F4-5.6 IS USM

Jill, that is a Curve-billed Thrasher. It is one of two resident thrashers along the Texas Lower Rio Grande and the most common of the two. The other is Long-billed Thrasher which looks very similar to Brown Thrasher. You might occasionally see a Brown Thrasher in winter or in migration but it is not a common bird.

Wow, Ward, that looks completely different from the Curve-billed as shown in my guides - the colors seem so much deeper than what is shown in both Sibley's and Nat'l Geo. That's why I was focused on the Brown and Long-billed, since they are darker, richer colored birds and this one seemed so dark. I don't disagree with you at all, but I think once again, it points out the difficulty of IDing things from photos. I suspect that perhaps this photo is darker overall than I realized.

Jill

Benton, ME
Canon Digital Rebel XT
Canon EF70-300 F4-5.6 IS USM

As one who has never had the good luck to see anything other than a 1 second glimpse of a Sage Thrasher, I have to say Thank you Jill and Ward for you insights on this mystery(to me) bird! And thank you to Noemi for sharing!

Ruth
Everett, WA
Zone 8

Jill, Noemi, et al.

I was stumped at first too, but then did some reading and found that the Curve-billed Thrashers of Texas tend to have more distinct breast spots than the ones of, say, Arizona, and they tend to be more grayish and less brown. My first thought had been Long-billed Thrasher, but as y'all noted, a Long-billed has a much "cleaner" breast with very dark streaking. I wouldn't have thought Curve-billed either, but it does match some of the illustrations I'm finding for the more eastern population.

Very cool yard bird!

Kevin Morgan
Baton Rouge, LA

The bird is far too gray to be Brown or Long-billed and they both have streaks not spots. I agree with Jill, photos are difficult, much more so than live birds in their habitat. When you think about it it makes sense, a photo is a micro-second of life and only from one angle. That warblers is Susan's yard from a month ago still puzzles me.

Can't add much regarding the ID noemi, we have Brown Thrashers here but they don't come out in the open for photo ops too often.
Anyway, that's a real handsome bird and a very nice shot.

Kenn

Kenn & Temple
Backyard Birders in St.Louis, MO - USA
Kenn & Temple's Slideshow

thanks all for trying to help, I've been leaning towards Curve-billed after doing my research , but after reading what you all have to say I have no idea what I have , these are other photos of the same bird




noemi
south texas

It is unquestionably a Curve-billed Thrasher. I have seen plenty of them in your area in the past. They like thick scrub and that strange woodland you have along the Lower Rio Grande.

These photos look so different colorwise than the first, where the bird seemed to have more contrast and be much darker overall. Yep, I can easily see that this is a Curve-billed now. Just for future reference, post whatever pictures you have of any bird you need an ID on - it can be very difficult to ID from single photos, especially if a diagnostic field mark is missing in it.

Jill

Benton, ME
Canon Digital Rebel XT
Canon EF70-300 F4-5.6 IS USM

hmmm, it appears the Quote function isn't working???

Quote: I agree with Jill, photos are difficult, much more so than live birds in their habitat. When you think about it it makes sense, a photo is a micro-second of life and only from one angle. That warblers is Susan's yard from a month ago still puzzles me.

I agree that a photo is difficult to make an id from Ward, but depending on how good of a look you had at the bird in the field, I also think that can be just as difficult. And by the way, which thread are you referring to with the warbler id? (I thought all the questions were already answered?)

Ruth
Everett, WA
Zone 8

It was a photo of a yellowish warbler with a split eye-ring in Susan's garden that I think was a MacGillivray's - some lack of confidence on my part. I see at most a couple of Mournings each year and it has been years since I've seen the sister species MacGillivray's. I feel like I am missing something and in a warbler that is a bother.

Hello Ward,

Well, it was unlikely that Warbler was a MacGillivray's. It would be way out of it's range here. That one was positively ID'd by an ebird expert to be an Orange-Crowned. So far, we've had an Orange Crowned, Nashville and the Common Yellow Throated in our gardens during the fall migration.
Here are some links related to the MacGillivray's...
This "googled" link shows many pics of those Warblers I've never seen before...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=macgillivray%27s+warbler&aq=0&oq=MacGillivray%27s+&aqi=g2
And this one had a map of the range of the MacGillivray's (1/2 way down the page on the right)...
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/MacGillivrays_Warbler/id

Susan Louise
from Branford CT/ live in Lincoln NE
Zone 5

Ward, like you and Jill have said before, it can be extremely difficult to make an id based on one photo, that's for sure...I came across this little blurb from Mr. David Sibley's Blog the other night while viewing another forum, and I thought of what you guys said, sorry you have to scroll down to the submitted photo in question:http://sibleyguides.blogspot.com/2007/12/perspective-on-mystery-bird.html

...Now, I know I'm not the brightest bulb in the pack, but never in a million years would I have guessed the identify of that bird!!

Ruth
Everett, WA
Zone 8

And this isn't including plumage aberrations that often occur, and which are seen most often in super common birds. A flock is blackbirds numbering in the 10s or 100s of thousands will nearly always have a bird or two with leucistic characters. On Sunday a friend and I detected a White-throated Sparrow with a round lopsided white crown and broad white wing bars. If we been carrying cameras all these year we could put together a real freak show of oddball birds. I remember a photo from the 1980s. A feeder in North Jersey had an Evening Grosbeak that was female on one side and male on the other.

Susan, you are probably right about your bird being an Orange-crowned, but you need to realize that the bird ID web sites generally do a pretty poor job with immature birds in fall. And that you are close enough to the range of McGillivray's to get them in migration. We've had several here in New Jersey.

I remember that photo going around - and I'm proud to say that I did eventually figure it out - but not before searching through every foreign guide I have trying to find something with that plumage "pattern"...

There is always such a temptation to take the ordinary and make it extraordinary, especially when you're starting out (let me tell you about that "Henslow's" sparrow I had under my feeder ten years ago, cough, cough...that bird's no longer on my life list!) Every spring I still try to turn every warbler I see into my nemesis bird the Cape May, and every spring I have to whack myself with the field guide and get real about what I'm seeing. Now at least I'm getting better about picking out the real anomalies (like the green morph PISI we had last winter), instead of just trying to make them up

Jill

Benton, ME
Canon Digital Rebel XT
Canon EF70-300 F4-5.6 IS USM

That's too bad you didn't carry around a camera back then Ward, I would have liked to see your freakshow! That's what makes birding fun, seeing something different! And on another positive note, someone reported seeing(and photographing) the first Snowy Owl of the year, near the Port of Tacoma, no less! Maybe this will finally be my year...

Jill, been there, done that, like in the example of your Cape May Warbler(except in my case, I once mistook a white bleach bottle in the middle of some farmland for a Snowy Owl but in my defense, it was getting dark...)

Ruth
Everett, WA
Zone 8

Along those lines, last year I had an Orange-crowned Warbler with the outermost primaries (P9 and P10) in the left wing a distinctly pale cream color, very different from the rest of the wing. I can't be certain it's the same bird, but I've got another one this fall which has the same abnormal wing feathers. Oddly enough, the rest of the bird is the brightest Orange-crowned Warbler I've ever had.

Kevin Morgan
Baton Rouge, LA

(And to return to the original topic in the thread: I'm off to the Lower Rio Grande Valley on Friday, to bird up till Thanksgiving. Hopefully I'll have at least a couple of decent pictures to show y'all when I get back.)

That is interesting Kevin. I have rarely seen plumage oddities on warblers. Once in a while we see a bright Orange-crowned here and we've wondered whether we were seeng one of the western races.

A run to the Lower Rio Grande in late November sounds great. My own trips have always occured in late winter. Hopefully something really interesting has or will show up - as if the regular birds weren't enough.

Hey Kevin, I'm so freakin jealous, I live right around the corner from the Rio Grande and I still haven't gotten around to bird watching down there, I need a better camera and my youngest son needs to be old enough to want to stay with his brother, I'm thinking maybe this summer. We are having great weather, cool mornings and warm sunny days, I hope you have a great time, and I can't wait to see all your captures.

noemi
south texas

Noemi,

I know you've probably told us, but whereabouts in south Texas are you again? I'm sure no matter where you are, there are good birding spots fairly close by. Maybe if you bake a cake for a neighbor or something you can swap out some babysitting!

And get a copy of the ABA's Birder's Guide to the Rio Grande Valley - it's got maps, directions, and details on where you can find what.

Ward,

Although not all the winter residents have shown up by this point, many have - I went last year about this time and picked up almost all of the Valley specialties. I dipped on Hook-billed Kite and Red-billed Pigeon, and there were a few other really good birds found after we left (including Blue Bunting and Crimson-collared Grosbeak), but Thanksgiving week is always good for travel for some of my university friends, so that's when I've ended up going.

Kevin Morgan
Baton Rouge, LA

Hook-billed Kite can be tough, I have missed them on about 1/2 my trips. The only time I saw Red-billed Pigeon was in March. The bird I always missed was Jacana. The last trip was terrible, high winds and freezing temperatures, dipped on the Blue Mockingbird, and only found rarities seen on other trips. All that said, there are so many special birds down there it is impossible to really fail.

Jill I've never seen a cape may warbler either that I know of. Although they do show up at the Heinz wildlife refuge during migration.

sarah merion station, Pennsylvania zone 6B