A not so 'Sage' Thrasher?

 Many readers will be aware of the presence of a Sage Thrasher here in Chatham-Kent. It has been reported on eBird daily for slightly over a week, and given its furtive nature spending lots of time amidst some fairly dense shrubbery, might have been here for quite a few days before that. 

I have been out to see and photograph it a couple of times, and even got some fairly good photos in spite of it furtiveness.

This first one is a typical setting: in the shadows and amidst many branches. The image is unprocessed, but it is a start, and sometimes one like this is as good as it gets.

Waiting for it to get into a better lit situation pays off, and one has to maneuver the camera to reduce the branch distractions.....

....but there are still shadows to contend with. However the side profile is useful to get the overall shape and the relatively short beak, short, at least for a member of the thrasher family.

Here is a side profile of the typical thrasher of this area. The size of the bird, the reddish brown colour, the large beak and long tail make it easy to separate the two species.

Brown Thrasher

A frontal view of the Sage Thrasher shows a heavier and slightly different dark streaky pattern.

Catching it out in a more open spot where it is picking away at some berries and in good light, makes waiting for it all the more worthwhile. There is a slight shadow at the back of the head, and continuing down onto the back. The shadow was caused by an over hanging leaf.

There are quite a few berry producing shrubs along this trail. One of the most abundant is Staghorn Sumac. However the berries are covered in small bristly hairs, probably making them less palatable.

Staghorn Sumac

Honeysuckle is not all that abundant, and most berries are gone by now.

Honeysuckle

Climbing Bittersweet is scattered along the trail, but most have not opened up yet. They still have their hard outer shell protecting the smaller berry inside. The second photo shows the exposed berries which may be suitable for this thrasher.

Climbing Bittersweet

Autumn Olive is quite abundant, and while the berries likely would have served the Sage Thrasher well, I expect, at this time of the season virtually all of those berries are gone. Many warblers and thrushes have already passed through, feeding on the abundance of these berries.

Autumn Olive

The main shrub that seems to interest the thrasher for feeding on is Multiflora Rose. I'm not sure whether it is the size of the berries, the taste or the general availability of these rose hips, but for some reason the thrasher is most often seen in the vicinity of a Multiflora Rose bush where there is an abundance of the berries.

At least there was an abundance, but as the days have gone by, the number of berries has definitely diminished. And that begs the question, where will this bird go when this food source runs out? Will it just move along the shrub row searching for more berries, or will it finally leave the area altogether and head for where it normally would be at this time of year?

I used the term 'sage' in my title. That was because I'm not so sure this bird was 'wise' in its decision to fly to southwestern Ontario at this time of year. Sage Thrashers are a mid-western to western species, and are named because the habitat they occupy normally has a lot of sage growing in it. In Canada they can be found breeding in southwestern Saskatchewan, for example in the Grasslands National Park area, and farther west into the drier open habitats of southern Alberta and British Columbia. Normally this species would migrate south, not east. Perhaps this bird got its internal compass bearings misaligned, and in combination with the periodically strong westerly winds, ended up here. It appears to be a young bird, hatched this year, so likely hadn't had any previous experience with respect to the species' normal migration. Regardless, it is here.

Yesterday I took a small branch of Multiflora Rose out to add to the thrasher's favourite bushy setting. There were still a few berries lingering from rose bushes that grew there, but I didn't think that a few more added to its dining area would hurt. And close to the parking lot, but well away from where the bird was normally found, I noticed quite a few other berry laden rose bushes, so snipped off a couple of branches and added them as well.

This isn't the first, second, third or even fourth record of Sage Thrasher in Kent/Chatham-Kent. It is the fifth!

The first record was one I found back in late April, 1981, at Rondeau, while on the search for another rare species. I had seen a Louisiana/Tri-colored Heron flying south, along the east beach of Rondeau, on April 25. I thought it might drop in to the Rondeau marsh, so on Apr 27, I headed out the Marsh Trail looking for it. As rare as the Louisiana Heron was, I got distracted by a bird which I had no idea what it was. I took notes, and then called out to some of the best known Ontario birders about it, including Alan Wormington and Norm Chesterfield, the latter of which had the biggest life list of birds in the world. There were others that came out as well, and although we got some decent looks, no one could definitively say what it was right off. After more looks and discussion, someone came up with Sage Thrasher, and then it all fit together. This was only the third record for Sage Thrasher in Ontario, with the two previously accepted records being in the mid-1960s and only seen by a very few. While my camera gear wasn't great at the time, I managed to get a few acceptable photos, all on film of course. This is a scan of one of them.

Fortunately for many birders, this thrasher remained along the southern half of the Marsh Trail for almost exactly three weeks. As it occurred right at the peak of spring birding, resulted in many hundreds of birders trekking down the trail to see it, as it was a lifer for almost everyone.

There was another record for Rondeau, and the second for Chatham-Kent, in early July of 1985, but only seen for a short time. A third record was in the winter of 1997, in Wallaceburg. The fourth record was one I had, again along the Rondeau Marsh Trail, on the Christmas Bird Count, in mid-December, 2008. And now this one. Five Sage Thrashers in C-K, and I've had at least one in each of the four main seasons.

Stay tuned as this particular bird may be around for awhile yet, and be the subject of another blog post.

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