If this Brown Thrasher (Toxostoma rufum) had not been making so much noise as it thrashed about in the dry leaves, I might not have spotted it on Monday at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge—its camouflage is almost perfect, except for those startling eyes.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Advertisements
Benjamin thinks this bird is ” looking for things for a nest and having fun.” He does blend well into those leaves. A very special photo! Thank-you, Mr. Mike!!
I suspect that the bird is mostly poking about looking for bugs to eat, but he seemed to be having fun. When I was a kid, I used to love kicking my way though piles of fallen leaves during the autumn (and puddles when it was raining).
Great camouflage – nice capture, Mike.
Thanks, Dan.
[…] My bird books say that Gray Catbirds (Dumetella carolinensis), like this one that I spotted on Friday at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge, make catlike mewing sounds, which accounts for the name. When I initially heard this bird, it was making a variety of different sounds, none of which sounded like a cat, and I thought it was a Northern Mockingbird. It was only when I zoomed in and saw that the bird had less distinctive markings than those of a mockingbird that I realized that it was a different species. Catbirds do, however, belong to the same family Mimidae (also known as mimic thrushes) as Northern Mockingbirds and Brown Thrashers, like the one that I featured in a recent posting. […]