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March 15, 2007  Many and Varied Venturing outdoors to look for birds does have its charms, but one of my favourite ways to watch birds has always been from the comfort of the great indoors. Birds seen about the yard are usually closer than those encountered in the field; are more likely to be relaxed, and more likely to be involved in natural activities rather than preparing to bolt as binocular-faced threats march ever closer. With March well underway I am currently enjoying some of the best out-of-the-window viewing opportunities of one of my favourite birds, the Varied Thrush. The Varied Thrush like the Robin is a member of the thrush family and at this time of year when hunger and migration press Varied’s into the open, it is a perfect opportunity to study these spectacular birds. Later in the year, around nesting time, just finding a Varied Thrush would prove much more of a challenge. I spotted the first Varied Thrushes arriving in my yard in the late afternoon on March 7th. Many times since then I’ve crept to the window hoping to get up-close views while they search the yard looking for anything edible. I’m not often disappointed. From dawn until well after sundown Varied Thrush hop about on the ground on all four sides of the house. When I describe a Varied Thrush to the uninitiated I often use the Robin as a starting point. Picture a Robin with a black band across its chest. Both birds are medium-sized with orange fronts, but the Robin is slightly larger and more robust. Here is a more in-depth description. A Varied Thrush is an orange and blue-gray medium-sized bird whose profile is more “dumpy” than slender. Its tail is short and wide with white tipped feathers. The wings are short, held resolutely at the sides, and feature a dazzling design of dark brown and orange. The heads of males and females have a stripe of orange or pale yellow running back along the neck from just above and behind the eye. The bill is fairly long and pointed, with rictal bristles near the gape (a common Thrush attribute.) The base of the lower mandible is pale orange; the upper is dark gray. The male’s throat is bright to brick orange; the female’s throat is a paler shade of orange. The forehead, cheeks and hind neck are dark gray, perhaps even blackish. A dark band that completely crosses the male’s upper chest, and is often only a partial band on many females’ chests, starts at the shoulder and droops lower than the top of the chest. The bright orange male chest is infringed upon by numerous light gray feathers creeping in from the flanks, and often from the upper chest feathers, where they cover the wing’s wrist. The chest feathers are curiously dimpled giving the bird’s breast a raspberry, or waffle, look rather than sleek feathering. The undertail area is white with chevrons of orange and gray. The feet are pink and often stained with mud. Some years ago I lived far from town and thus had much further to drive on backroads. I often happened upon road-killed Varied Thrush. (Isn’t it funny we say “road-kill,” as if it was the road that got up and beat the bird to death?) In studying the wings of these birds, I noted they bore a marked similarity to a Townsend’s Solitaire, another ‘western’ bird also a member of the Thrush family. That same year I examined a number of road-killed and window-killed Varied Thrush and became familiar with many of the varied Thrush’s features. Varied Thrushes do nest locally but I’ve only ever found one nest quite by accident. I was out near Ruth Lake in April, an area featuring mature fir trees, large moss covered logs, and erratic boulders - a perfect place for Thrush. I happened to be walking along an old road that was well overgrown with alder trees and flanked with small spruce trees. Something made me pause and when I stopped, I disconcerted a female Varied Thrush sitting on a nest about 10 feet away from where I stood. If she had not been spooked I would have walked right past her. I stood on my tiptoes to see into a nest remarkably similar to a Robins. The nest was pressed against the slender trunk of the tree and in it were four dark blue eggs with a bit of dark scrolling on one end. I now know of several places where I can find Varied Thrush in the nesting season, but by far the greatest detailed viewing of this species is still in March. I intend to spend much of March and some of April at the window with my eyes drinking in even more details of a bird that is as beautiful as it is reclusive. To e-mail Tom CLICK HERE To look at previous column CLICK HERE |
