Subject: Re: Wood Thrush?
Date: Oct 30 19:53:12 1998
From: Michael Price - mprice at mindlink.bc.ca


Hi Tweets,

Sue Ericksen writes, re "a new [yard] bird":

>He's dark brown on back

Sue, did you see the head color? Wood Thrush Hylocichla mustelina has a warm
russet head and nape usually contrasting with a darker, colder brown back
and tail. Oh, and it's got a pretty conspicuous white eye-ring.

>and heavily streaked on the underside

Whereas Wood Thrush is heavily and rather evenly spotted with dark brown
round or oval spots on a white ground, with the spotting slightly heavier on
throat and upper chest.

>and he's "Towhee" size.

Wood Thrushes aren't towhee-shaped, though--more like very plump robins,
with a thrush's longer, thinner bill; if it's towhee-shaped as well as
-sized, it's likely a large finch.

>He is feeding on the ground and is showing aggressive
>behavior in chasing off the juncos and white crowned sparrows.

This suggests another seed-eater rather than a thrush; most thrushes in
contact with seed-eating finches don't seem to care much since they're not
competing for the same food resource. That it's running off the others
suggests it wants to monopolise that resource, something I'd think only
another finch would want to do. Scuffling with the local finches is a pretty
atypical behavior for a Wood Thrush, but perhaps not completely impossible
in migration.

But if this bird is seed-eating with finches, it likely isn't a Wood Thrush
and probably not a thrush at all; in cold weather, when insect-prey is
scarce to nonexistent, you're far more likely to see thrushes feeding at
berry bushes or on fallen fruit than scarfing up seeds--suet, maybe--at a
feeder. Have you considered alternative identifications, just in case it
turns out to be another species?

This is a species I knew fairly well when I was a kid back east in Ontario,
a bird of leafy Carolina-forest bottomlands and forested lakesides, and
gifted with a wonderful song, a repeated phrase of which you may hear in
many commercials where the company is trying to persuade (usually a
euphemistic synonym for 'con') you into thinking it's environmentally
conscious. If you hear a clear 'eeolay'--say it with the 'ee' syllable at
high C and you'll get a good rendition of the phrasing--you've heard the
characteristic Wood Thrush phrase.

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
mprice at mindlink.net

"She's psychic....we've decided to find it charming."
--Frasier