California Thrasher…by Brad Marks

Good news, Brad is back from his field assignment and from what I’ve heard, the Intrigued HQ is still standing. Yes Virginia I now believe in miracles. We’ve been on South Padre Island for a few days now and making the most of it. The migrants are now arriving and starting to get those crucial Warblers ticked off this year’s list. Also met a lot of great birders this trip that have been incredibly helpful in pushing this year’s Average Year number to 242 (link here). Still behind last year’s pace, but definitely chipped into the deficit. A lot of that is due to a healthy dose of lifers we’ve been able to hunt down. Now the busy work of making sure all the images are copied off to multiple drives, the eBird reports are filled out and the birding tracking sheets are updated…I need a nap. Brad is going to take the lead and bring us one of his own lifers from California.

Take it away Brad…

Normally when I write these brief stories, I’ve taken most of the photos because I’m carrying the larger lens and can capture the little feathered guys at a further distance.  Not this time.  Jan was able to hold one bird captive with her bird whisperer powers.  Today’s subject was also nice enough to stay only a few yards off the path.  All of the photos in this story are from her.

Jan and I had just left a major theme park in SoCal on our way back to Las Vegas to meet the kids.  We stopped at the Upper Newport Bay Nature Preserve (UNBNP) just outside Newport Beach to see what we could see (isn’t that why the bear went over the mountain?).  I parked the car about 8:30am and started assembling the cameras.  We didn’t know before we got there, but John Wayne Airport (originally called Orange County Airport) is only a couple of miles away.  Unfortunately, the planes depart right over the nature preserve.  While I seemed to duck every time one of the monsters flew overhead, the local bird life didn’t seem to care at all.

Being the gentleman I am, I assembled Jan’s camera first, and then started to put mine together.  By the time I had my camera ready, shut the hatch, and locked the doors, Jan was already a couple hundred yards down the trail.  The shrubbery near the cars was tall enough I couldn’t see which trail she had taken.  But listening for a few seconds, in between airplane flights, the high-speed shutter clicking told me which way to go.

Hit the jump to learn more about the reason for all those clicks!

This is one of the first birds Jan saw at this location.  Much like the Western Meadowlarks from prior stories (see here), she found a solitary bird sitting high up on a stalk.  The chapparal (we would call it “brush” in the Midwest) was consistently 5-7 feet tall next to the trail.  Finding brown birds in it was impossible, unless they popped above the fray like this one did.   Even brightly colored birds were very hard to see, let alone get the camera to focus on them.  Unlike Yosemite and Sequoia where we just were, there were zero trees along the paths.  This bird wasn’t as close to the path as Jan would have liked.  She had the 70-200mm all the way at 200mm, so these images are cropped quite a bit.  When it did decide to sing, an airplane was usually flying overhead so Merlin couldn’t hear its song.  Keep in mind, I’m still nowhere near when she’s taking all of these photos.  You’ll see what I was able to capture at the very end.

My first thought when seeing the dark silhouette with the curved bill in the photos was that Jan had found a wayward Hawaiian Honeycreeper.  Knowing that couldn’t be the case, I had zero idea what this bird was.  The Honeycreeper is bright red, this one is “hide in the undergrowth” brown.  I’ve come to rely on Merlin when we travel to new areas for a few reasons.  First, it helps remind me where we were when I look at the dates and locations of the recordings later.  Second, it can sometimes help me identify birds we saw at different times of the day by matching up the timestamp on the photo with the recording date/time.  Finally, Merlin can help identify birds I might not be able to hear, or hear separately from the rest of the din of a busy forest path. 

I had suspicions I knew which bird this was, but really wasn’t sure until we hit the hotel in Vegas and began reviewing all of the bird photos we took at UNBNP.  Turns out we, OK Jan, caught another state named bird, and a +1.  Today’s featured guest is a California Thrasher (Toxostoma redivivum).  They live up and down the California coast year-round.  Nice weather, if you can get it. 

Classic problem:  bird in silhouette with bright grey sky background, almost 18% grey.  I asked Lightroom to do what it could with the images. 

I think at this point the Thrasher must be wondering, “what are all of the clicking noises?”  Remember, at this point I’m still trying to find Jan on the trails, so I’m really making all of this up.  Hehehe

The Thrasher is now ready for its solo.

California Thrashers build nests in the chaparral (brush) several feet off the ground.  Most of the food they need comes right from this habitat.  Insects, grubs and beetles also like the chaparral for cover.  Bonus points — built-in buffet.  Thrashers also eat various berries when in season.  Who doesn’t like fresh fruit?

Thrashers tend to form lifelong bonds.  Pairs forage together.  They also protect the area as a team, chasing away other pairs from their territory.  A mated pair will raise 1-6 eggs at a time.  Once the chicks are old enough, the parents chase away the young from their first brood of the season as the female builds a second nest for the mating season.  Continuous habitat loss is the biggest threat to these birds.  California Thrashers have lost 50% of their range-restricted populations in the past 50 years.  Local Thrasher populations will vanish when a territory becomes fragmented by human development.

I finally found Jan just as the Thrasher was leaving its lofty post and looking for cover in the chaparral along the trail.   Foraging birds often run off, with tail raised, when they see an intruder, or a really large camera lens pointed in their general direction.  A good practice that probably helps them live to be around 9 years old in the wild.

I fibbed earlier, there is one photo in this story from me.

And with that, we’ve reached the end.

Thank you for reading.  If you want to see more California Thrasher photos, please visit here.

Credits:

Thanks again to Jan for proofreading and editing.  Thanks to Jan for all but one of the photos in this article.