Curve-billed Thrasher Gallery
Taxostoma curvirostre
eBird gives this description for the Curve-billed Thrasher: Long-tailed with decurved bill and fairly faint round spots on breast and belly. Grayish-brown overall with paler throat and orangey undertail. Eye color varies from yellow to orange. Lurks around cactus and desert shrubs. Most common thrasher in suburban yards and parks in the southwest U.S. and Mexico. Perches atop a prickly shrub to sing. All About Birds provides this additional descriptive information about the Curve-billed Thrasher: Strong legs and a long, decurved bill give Curve-billed Thrashers the perfect tools for hunting insects in the punishing deserts, canyons, and brushlands that are its home. That long bill also keeps long-legged insect prey at a safe distance and comes in handy for foraging and nesting among spiny plants, especially cacti. This species is so typical of the deserts of the American Southwest and northern Mexico that its whistled whit-wheet call is often the first vocalization that visiting bird watchers learn.
I had the pleasure of watching several Curve-billed Thrashers on my August 31, 2020, visit to Christmas Mountains Oasis. My impression of this bird? Wild-eyed and enthusiastic!
“Cool Facts” about the Curve-billed Thrasher from All About Birds…
- The Curve-billed Thrasher that lives in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and northwestern Mexico looks different than the form that lives in the Chihuahuan Desert of Texas and central Mexico, and they may be separate species. The Texas and eastern bird has a lighter breast, more contrasting spots, pale wingbars, and white tail corners. The more western form has a grayer breast with less obvious spots, inconspicuous wingbars, and smaller, more grayish tail corners.
- Thrashers have impressive bills, but the Curve-billed’s is actually straighter and shorter than relatives such as LeConte’s, Crissal, and California Thrashers. That’s because when famed English naturalist William John Swainson first described Curve-billed Thrasher, from a Mexican specimen in 1827, he had not yet seen these other three species.
- The oldest recorded Curve-billed Thrasher was at least 10 years, 9 months old when it was found in Arizona in 1946. It had been banded in the same state in 1936.