Our second Varied Thrush for the season was a full-blown, high speed, house
shaking, ear rattling, mortal, window strike, at one of my office windows, four
feet from my right ear.

Considering how much glass there is in this house, we rarely have window strikes
here, and this is the first (known) mortality - probably because the windows
have pane dividers. And in this case, because it was evening, the (white) blinds
were drawn on that window!!!

Now, the size of the impact clearly meant the bird was traveling at full
emergency military power. Which causes me to reflect on our past history with
Varied Thrushes.

In 1994, as I was idly watching the bird bath with my binos, a Sharpie whacked a
Varied Thrush from the water and carried it off into the woods.

In 1995, about this time of year, I think, a Varied Thrush slammed into the
siding in the corner of our front porch (a trap). A Sharpie followed him within
milliseconds, and sat on him, looking at me as if to say, "Hey, the porch was
~his~ idea!"... then struggled off with breakfast.

As I suspect the window strike tonight resulted from pursuit, I'm beginning to
wonder if Varied Thrushes are favorite Sharpie prey.

Are they, by their nature, easy to see, and slow to flee?

They make a great meal, much better than Chickadee hors d'oeuvre, and they don't
seem as powerful in battle as a Robin. I wonder if they don't do more than their
share to support the accipiter population.

Jerry Blinn


E-mail from: Jerry Blinn, 28-Oct-1996