The Brown Thrasher

By Al Lowe
Contributor

One bird in our area, which sings very beautifully, from the top of a tree or a hidden place in the underbrush, is the Brown Thrasher.
This bird, one of our most gifted native songbirds, is very modest in looks. All of its upper parts are brown - very distinctly reddish brown. Its breast and belly are nearly white, heavily streaked or spotted with black. So you could mistake it for a thrush. But there are two characteristics which are totally different from any other thrush - the prominent yellow eye, and the extra long tail.
Our thrasher belongs to a family called Mimidae - mimics - the imitators, the mockingbirds. There are only a few birds in the family, and all of them are found only in the Americas. It includes the Catbird, common in our area, the Northern Mockingbird, which you might see in Manitoba, and our native Thrasher. All of these birds are great singers. They all sing in short phrases with pauses in between, and they all imitate other birds as well as putting in some of their own. Some of the phrasing is very beautiful, but some of it is harsh, or even discordant.
Incase you can hear but not see the singer, here is a way in which you can usually tell them apart. The Mockingbird very often repeats each phrase three times before going on to a new one. The Catbird almost never repeats himself. And the Brown Thrasher usually repeats each phrase twice.
In the springtime, this bird puts on quite a vocal performance, and will sing steadily for over an hour. Many people don’t know that it also sings very softly at times - same phrasing but audible only in a radius of about six feet. This is a little private part of the courtship ritual.
The Brown Thrasher is a bird of thickets. It makes its nest in low bushes, and it generally stays pretty close to the alders or willows or honeysuckles. Its diet is to a large extent made up of insects (70%) but it also eats other things, seeds, small frogs and the like, as do many birds.
Taxostoma rufum is its official scientific name. Look for it, or listen for it in open country, in farming areas, scrubby or cut over areas. It does not frequent the deep woods at all.
The Brown Thrasher is found from Alberta through southern Ontario and Quebec. It is in many parts of Northwestern Ontario as well. It is surely one of the most melodious of our birds. Unfortunately for us, it doesn’t sing in the moonlight like the Mockingbird does, and it stops singing altogether when the nesting season is underway.
So you won’t hear it at night, and you won’t hear it much past the end of June.