Howdy everyone! February is a short month and I am trying my best to make sure we hit our Intrigued monthly quota goal for posts. March is going to get a bit hectic as Linda and I head back out to Arizona for our spring migration. Fortunately, Brad and Jan are heading back from their latest adventure out east and I’m sure there are plenty of stories on their way from this trip as well as their jaunts across the pond. For now, you are stuck with me! Before we get to today’s featured feathered friend, wanted to mention I have finally made it through all the Average Year and my Life List updates. Although, thanks to a late find from Colorado my Life List and 2024 results are now one off – it is inevitable that update efforts get eclipsed, but still feels good to be only a smidgen off of current. As you can tell from the left nav-bar I am officially at 443+1 for the life list and per the Average Year journal, at 244+2 provisionals for this year (link here). Kind of shocking to be over 55% of my life list and 82% of my annual goal and not even to the end of the 2nd month. As they say, life is good. Since I brought up the Life List, thought I would go with a member that was added just last year.
Hit the jump to read more about this rather understated Thrasher.
Here at Intrigued, we have posted on a large number of the Thrasher family over the years. This has included:
The Brown Thrasher (link here)
The Long Billed Thrasher (link here)
The Curve-Billed Thrasher (link here)
The Crissal Thrasher (link here)
…and thanks to Brad’s trip out west, the California Thrasher (link here) (note, Brad also featured the Crissal’s link here). That is quite the list of Thrashers. By my count there are 8 Thrasher members of the Mimidae family. That leaves three unaccounted for, the Bendire’s, LeConte’s and the Sage.
One of those I have never seen (actually 2 as I have not seen the California either), one I do have in the queue and, well, today’s species. Oh, before I go on, the Gray Catbird and Northern Mockingbird are the only other two members of this family and both have already been featured giving us nearly the entire taxonomy.
Place your DraftBirds bets…drum roll..you are looking at the Sage Thrasher. I’ll forego the 4 page required disclaimer about online betting restrictions state by state within the US.
Whenever I think of Thrashers, I immediately jump to their exceptionally large schnauzes. Some straight, some curved, some really curved and all formidable. That assessment may be why it took until last January ..wait, crap, now must refer to that as the January before last (ugh, Father Time hates me). Anyway, our first real encounter with the Sage Thrasher was on our visit to Las Vegas in early 2024. Snow chased us all the way across Arizona so we just bailed and took off to Sin City.
There are always eBird reports of the Sage being found at the Corn Creek Field Station at the entrance to Desert National Wildlife Refuge, yet that check was always missing after our visits. We were just about to call it quits and head up into the Refuge when Merlin alerted to the Sage. Odd, I do not see a large, obnoxiously billed trash-talkin’ bird blasting through the underbrush. Eventually heard a long song, but a continued search of the desert scrub yielded nothing. It must have been comedic gold for this specimen as it was FINALLY spotted sitting in a tree about 50 feet away just looking at me. At first I didn’t believe it, smaller bodied than the other Thrashers I am used to (8-9 inches which is the low end for the other’s listed above which can go over 11″). Cornell is accurate when they likened it more to a Thrush, however, it did have that distinctive pale, yellowish eye.
I nice western species find. Their non-breeding grounds is in the southwest, heavily into Texas and down into New Mexico. They push way up to the northern border during the smoochie season. Pretty odd that we have not encountered the Sage on our many trips to the Rio Grande Valley and for that matter our numerous trips to Vegas. Now that the seal is broken, I’ll probably be seeing it all the time now – especially now that I know that to look for.
How about we get to some quick tidbits on this elusive Thrasher before you get on your way. The Queen of the birding world, their elaborate songs can extend over 20 minutes with interspersed mocks of other species (yikes, just checked and Bohemian Rhapsody is only 6 minutes long… change that reference to Dream Theater – Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence which is an entire album side). Pretty weak on the tidbits Cornell, the only other thing worth noting is they used to be called the Mountain Mockingbird until they noticed the taxonomy differences.
All I have for you today folks. Hope you enjoyed this new entry on the Life List. Maybe someday I’ll get around to that “other” Thrasher, although it has barely been a year hehehe.
Life Intrigued 