Curve-billed Thrasher

Toxostoma curvirostreOrder: PASSERIFORMESFamily: Mockingbirds and Thrashers (Mimidae)

General

Curve-billed Thrasher: Medium-sized thrasher (palmeri), with gray upperparts and spotted, pale gray underparts. Eyes are orange-red and bill is long and decurved. Tail is long and dark gray. Sexes are similar. Juvenile has straighter and shorter bill, and yellow eyes.

Range and Habitat

Curve-billed Thrasher: Resident from southwestern U.S. to southern Mexico. Preferred habitats include dense aggregations of cholla cactus, mesquite, or palo verde. Also uses dense growth in urban areas.

Listen to Call

Voice Text

"whit-wheet"

Interesting Facts

The Curve-billed Thrasher that lives in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and northwestern Mexico looks slightly different than the form that lives in the Chihuahuan Desert of Texas and central Mexico, and they may be separate species.

Author

Gary Owen Dick

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Bird Call Credits: The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Martyn Stewart, http://www.naturesound.org, Redmond, Washington USA. The reuse or copying of bird calls in this database is strictly forbidden.

Curve-billed Thrasher

Curve-billed Thrasher: Medium-sized thrasher (palmeri), with gray upperparts and spotted, pale gray underparts. Eyes are orange-red and bill is long and decurved. Tail is long and dark gray. Legs and feet are black. Feeds on insects, spiders, small reptiles, fruits, seeds and berries.

● Song: "whit-wheet"

● Foraging & Feeding: Curve-billed Thrasher: Eats mostly insects, but also cactus seeds and fruits, and various berries; forages on the ground, tossing aside litter in search of food.

● Breeding & nesting: Curve-billed Thrasher: One to five pale blue green eggs with light brown spots are laid in a nest made of twigs and rootlets, lined with fine materials, and built in a dense thorny desert shrub or in a branching clump of cactus, usually 2 to 8 feet above the ground. Incubation ranges from 12 to 15 days and is carried out by both parents.

● Similar species: Curve-billed Thrasher: Bendire`s Thrasher has smaller size and straighter bill with a yellow base to lower mandible and lower call. Sage Thrasher is smaller, has yellow eyes, short straight slender bill, white underparts, two white wing-bars and white-tipped outer tail feathers.

Flight Pattern

Long flights are swift and direct on rapidly beating wings. Shorter flights are several rapid shallow wing beats followed by brief periods of wings at sides or short glide.

Curve-billed Thrasher (palemeri) Breeding Male Body Illustration

● Range & Habitat: Curve-billed Thrasher: Resident from southwestern U.S. to southern Mexico. Preferred habitats include dense aggregations of cholla cactus, mesquite, or palo verde. Also uses dense growth in urban areas.

^BreedingMonogamous, Solitary nester

^Population

^MigrationNonmigratory

^Weight2.8 Ounces

Field Guide to Birds of North America