Tales from the Garden

Starting this past October, a solitary male Curved-bill Thrasher began spending a lot of time in our garden each day, foraging for food and water.   Since then, it been joined by another, most likely a female or a juvenile.  Whenever either of these crow-sized birds is on the ground, they are very easy to spot by the amount of wood chip mulch flying in all directions from their vigorous digging for soil insects and seeds!     As soon as the sun comes up, the male also likes to perch at the top of one of the Hackberry trees, its long and slender, hooked bill silhouetted against the sky.   When it opens that bill to begin to sing, what a marvelous series of melodies comes out! It typically makes a whit-wheet call that sounds like someone whistling to hail a taxi, but can also make a low chuk-chuk call that sounds much like the Yellow-breasted Chat, and to imitate the fussy, raspy calls of Wrens.   Its songs are very pleasant, with soft, round notes up ...