Overview

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.

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.

Breeding and 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.

Foraging and 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.

Readily Eats

Suet, Sunflower Seed, Nuts

Vocalization

Curve-billed Thrasher: Song is melodic, varied, and intricate, with low trills and warbles, often with two or three repetitions of phrases. Call is a sharp "whit-wheet", which sometimes includes three notes.

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.