I was excited when a Brown Thrasher visited my platform feeder for a few days in early September. I assumed it was a bird moving south to its winter home in the Southeastern United States.
But last week another Brown Thrasher appeared, and I don’t know if it’s the same bird, or if platform feeders are just irresistible to these birds. My visitor prefers to snatch peanuts:
Brown Thrashers like to rustle through fallen leaves looking for their favorite food–insects–but they also eat fruit and nuts. In the wild I’ve mostly spotted them flying low through trees and shrubs along wooded country roads.
These birds are in the same family as mockingbirds and catbirds, and they have a very loud, distinctive song with changing phrases. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, a Brown Thrasher may sing more than 1100 different song types.
A Brown Thrasher is about the size of a Blue Jay. The birds have a reddish-brown back and a white belly full of blackish-brown streaks. The long beak is curved slightly downward, and the bird has yellow eyes.
Brown Thrashers are heard more often than they are seen because they like to hide in dense shrubbery. I’ve spotted a few of them in my neighborhood over the years, but they were always hard to follow because they stayed hidden in shrubs or under hedges.
It’s been a thrill to see these beautiful birds out in the open on the platform feeder.