At first, I was going to go on a long rant on what I think about the new WordPress comments administration page, then I decided not to end our truly enjoyable migration on a sour note. The current schedule has us leaving the great state of Texas sometime tomorrow depending on how close we adhere – we are retired, schedule, smedules. For those keeping score out there, this means I am likely at the high-water mark on the top 100 Texas birders list. The last regen of the list puts me at #12 with 223 species (and 3 exotic escapees). My new friend Tim H. sits on top with his 300 tallies as he undertakes his Texas Big Year endeavor – he is off to a great start! Actually, what I am really proud of is I broke into the top 100 birders in all of US at #99. Both of these standings will start dropping quickly with our return home, but I can bask in the glory for another day ha. Oh, and it feels good to know I am only 77 species from my Average Year goal (link here).
Keeping with the celebration theme, going with a rather festive featured feathered friend.
Hit the jump to read about this surprise desert visitor.
To set the stage a bit, I already alluded to this “rarity” in the last post of 2024 – eesh, that sounds so long ago these days. In that post I featured the new lifer Rufous-Backed Thrush found at Desert National Wildlife Refuge located in Las Vegas, NV (link here). A member of the Thrush family more likely found in Central America and not officially recognized by Cornell as a North American resident (although the “sightings” map shows plenty of spots in our southwestern states). That Robin holds the 3rd spot on my easiest “chase” birds. Wanna guess what number 2 on that list is?
“Alex, I’ll take Halloween inspired birds for $200”. Oddly enough, this holder of the 2nd spot is simply because it was seen 2 minutes before the Rufous-Backed Robin was discovered. A quick study of the Desert NWR area eBird reports added these two rarities to my already large list of must-gets on our visit. I recommend always having a target list of birds wherever you go – Intrigued golden rule “Bird with Purpose”. Not to be confused with Linda’s mantra “Type with Purpose” of which I have developed a keen ear for degree of keyboard pound to subject angst level. If I can hear the keys from my den..well, stay in the den hehehe. Apologies, I digress, back to or pumpkin colored specimen.
With mental list in head so to speak, Linda dealt with getting our bird dogs ready for the hunt, while I headed out to the orchard area just left from the back of the Corn Creek Field Station visitor center. There were a couple of eBird checklists that gave this key information on where they had found the rarities – Note, Sam (link here), gave me a nudge to take a post or two and go over some of the tools Intrigued uses in the field, so look for that in upcoming offerings. Arrived at the orchard fence line and greeted two ladies that were standing there – “Lady to the left of me, lady to the right, Here I am, stuck in the middle with trees”. Thick trees, tangly trees, annoyingly full of dense and auto-focus defeating limbs. Fortunately, not capable of concealing a burnt orange bird with a dark blue-grey back and darker wings. “Is that the Varied!?!”
I got the impression the two ladies had been there a while and were beside themselves at the pure luck of this new arrival. The flutter of shutters commenced immediately in concert with a litany of curse words that were likely louder than any of us intended. It may be easy to see, but it was an absolute nightmare to get a clean angle on it. Trust me, you are seeing the best out of a pile of shots that ended up on the digital darkroom floor. Guessing it was around a 5 minute experience before this lifer exited stage left to make way for act two of Thrushapalooza. If those two ladies didn’t already consider me the luckiest birder alive, can’t imagine what they thought when the Rufous-Backed came in right on the heels of the Varied exit.
Time to get to some interesting tidbits about this rather striking looking Turd, sorry, I mean Turdidae. The name pretty much gives them away as kin to the Robin and the multitude of other birds carrying the Thrush qualifier. You may not know their other family members include the Bluebirds (Eastern/Western/Mountain), Veery and Townsend’s Solitaire. For those considering a visit to Desert NWR, you should add the Western Bluebird, Mountain Bluebird and the Solitaire to your target list as they are all easily found there (link here, here and here). On a personal front, the Bluebirds are quite pretty, but this Varied is downright stunning – my Halloween affinity bias may be showing through. The females are more subdued than the males with dominant brown hues instead of the darker blues of their counterparts – still easily distinguishable with their orange tailoring. Unlike the Rufous-Backed Robin, the Varied is recognized by Cornell and can be found on the western coast of the US up into Alaska with some push into the neighboring states to the east – considered scarce in southern Nevada. Based on the sightings map, they do seem to be a bit erratic during the wintering months with sparse observations all the way to the east coast – you might even say “Varied” locations. For the record, I have no idea why they were given this particular name – never give Intrigued a chance to be creative hehehe. Will leave you with a reference from Cornell’s website that indicates this Thrush is very aggressive with other birds (even in their own species) – regular ol’ cranky pants.
Need to let you go so we can finalize our trip back to the Midwest tundra – Linda has already vetoed my idea to turn around and head back to South Padre Island!
Wildlife Intrigued 
What’s this about wp comments ad-min? Please tell as I’ve not noticed anything.
Varied Thrush, is it so called because it’s plumage can be, er, varied? Or is that me being too simplistic. Sure I’ve seen photos of the ones that have turned up here and they can look, er, variable. Not bad efforts for a tree bound bird.
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Basically they adopted the WP org comment page which I am not a fan of. Before I could simply go through the comments one by one, like them and reply to them at the same time – also kept them in received order so I didn’t have to bounce all over the place trying to figure out if a new comment has been added on an older post. It at least shows the number of likes so I can see if I’ve replied to it or not, but then have to navigate over to the actual post and manually press the like on the comment – by the way, that has to be done on a different browser because the likes do not work on Firefox. Sick and tired of enhancements that simply add time to getting things done…much like the block editor which sucks compared to the classic editor. Need to check my blood pressure now. I can definitely see the plumage variances giving to the name, but it appears to be some kind of mixup by Johann Friedrich Gmelin who thought he was looking at a Spotted Robin – even the genus name Ixoreus naevius is screwed up being Spotted Mistletoe due to the confusion with the Mockinbirds. I left that out of the post thanks to the headache it gave me trying to figure out how it all fits together. Regardless, we can blame my German heritage for the problem ha. Think it was Brad who added to our future camera wishlist the ability to remove twigs – I could have used that feature that day for sure! Appreciate you dropping in B. hope all is well over there.
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Things are fine B. Just about to pen my first post for quite a while!
The origin of that thrush’s name has got me confused as well, good job you left that bit out!
Yeah wp keep pissing about altering things, however I’ve not noticed anything different about the comments……yet. The block editor doesn’t come into play, I click on the little cross and chose classic then it’s just like the old days. Don’t use Firefox I go through google chrome.
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I am sure there is more to the story regarding its name, but what little I did try to track down was just a mess so that means we are at liberty to explain it however we want ha. I start with the blocks, then go in and add my html enhancements to the code block and then have to convert it to the classic block because the new block doesn’t like the code and on and on. My life is software, from first day in class it was preached tools should NEVER get in the way of the product, yet here we are. I am not a huge fan of Google but I bit my teeth on it for email and our calendar – I don’t trust them AT ALL. My Firefox has the Duck Duck Go extensions on it to limit the amount of data collection, but that is clearly getting in the way of what WP is trying to do so something is going on there and I suspect it is not in my privacy favor. For now, I do my editing/posting on Firefox and then jump over to Chrome to do my liking and commenting.
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Congratulations on being a top-tier birder. I’m a bottom feeder when it comes to birding. Beautiful photos of your Halewen-colored friend. We are still cold out here.
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Thanks Tim! If you spot just one bird you are still better than probably half the Texas population and I know you are keen on Sandhills and Great Horned Owls – 223 more to go ha. I wish I could have gotten some clears shots of this beautiful bird, but given the conditions I can’t complain that much. We are out of Texas now and temps are still hanging around 60 here in Arkansas – problem is the rain has been coming down for days now and its flooding out everywhere around us. Hopefully they know how to contain what they need unlike a certain state to our west. Take care and I’ll check to see how you are doing on the New Mexico birder list.
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I’ve seen red-tailed and Cooper’s hawks, finches and sparrows, so there are more than cranes, owls and pTerodactyls (Great Blue Herons). Where does seven birds put me on the birder scale?
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Well, I am not sure about New Mexico, but that wouldn’t even get you into the game in Texas with 320 at the top – a little better chance on the Illinois list as the top there is only 127. I suspect you see more birds than you think you do.
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Stunning captures, congrats on finding it and your new year burst into birding!
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Thanks Donna – it has definitely been a whirlwind of birding this month. Told Linda I have to go home to relax and recover from the frantic birding pace we have been keeping up since we made our way south. Hoping we can visit this orange beauty on our April trip back out to Arizona/Nevada…fingers crossed I’ll be able to get better shots! Take care Donna, appreciate you dropping in.
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What a gorgeous bird! Such surprising colors, and you did very well, peering between the twigs. I’ve learned that if I pre-focus manually on a bird in the brush, my auto-focus can sometimes be “taught” what my intended target is, and will then snap to the bird behind the twigs.
Congrats on your stellar numbers, that’s really impressive. And I’ll be looking forward to your tool tips – heaven knows I need all the help I can get!
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I’ll give the pre-focus trick a try, I definitely need to get better. Typically I let the autofocus get close and then tweak the focus ring back and forth in an attempt to push through the obstructing twigs – sometimes works, most of the time the damn bird will move before I get a shot off and have to start the process all over. I am officially out of Texas as a few hours ago, so beyond the last bird I got before crossing the border (a Blue Jay at Caddo Lake) my numbers will have hit their high water mark until we return to north Texas in April on our way to Arizona. A lot of fun and managed to meet a number of the individuals in that top 100 Texas list. I do hope I can keep the top US ranking up, but IL is a tough place to get a lot of birds outside of migrations so it won’t be easy. We all learn together Sam – take care and thanks for the drop in.
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I think Linda should have authorized the U-turn, except for the storm that hit the middle of TX a day or so after you left. Only #12? How many above that number did it with an air-cast on their shooting foot? Added complexity should count for something on the year-end review this year. Jan and I will have to keep our eyes open next time we are in the desert. Oh, and let’s lobby Nikon for the “twig detection and elimination” feature for our cameras.
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I suspect that the other 11 were not lugging around a boat anchor (I know #1 wasn’t as I am friends with him), so I guess I could claim a sympathy handicap. We’ll through the entire weight of Intrigued at them and see if they’ll add our features (hint, don’t hold you breath ha).
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Let’s hope they do and yhen grant Intrigued royalties for the idea.
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We have it publicly documented now, so we have a legal standing if they ever put that function in!!
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A good use for the Legal department, finally.
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Finally hehehe.
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Wonderful shot! Looking cute 🥰
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Thank you Priti. I wish I could have brought you a less cluttered series of shots, but you learn pretty quick in the field that sometimes you just have to take whatever you can get in the tin. Appreciate you stopping by!
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My pleasure 😊
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