northeast-flora-and-fauna

This Brown Thrasher was out and about last spring. These birds are part of a family of bird mimics that includes the Northern Mockingbird . Though the Brown Thrasher doesn't look much like the Northern Mockingbird, if you can't see the bird but only hear the mimicry, you can confuse them. The main difference is that while the Brown Thrasher will mimic a sound (frequently but not necessarily a bird song/call) twice before moving on to the next sound, the Northern Mockingbird will mimic a sound 3 times before moving on to the next sound. This particular bird was slightly hidden by foliage, though it's not too bad a picture. Though range maps show Brown Thrashers spending the winter a little south of here, they are expected to winter as close to here as Delaware/Maryland. Given that birds probably adjust their migration from year to year based on temperature and the abundance of food, it wouldn't surprise me if someone spotted some of them around here in the winter. May ...

A couple weeks ago I posted about 2 of New Jersey's 3 most common bird mimics that I saw back on May 3. Only 2 days later in May I encountered several of the 3rd mimic, the Gray Catbird . During warmer months [1], these guys are perhaps the easiest of our bird mimics to notice, though it's not usually because of their mimicry. I almost always notice them from their calls - sort of a squawky mewing sound [2] - than their songs - a long sequence of mimicked sounds [3].  Gray Catbirds do have a crisp-look about them, and are a soft gray except for a dark patch on the top of their heads. The 1st 2 pictures show the catbirds vocalizing, though it wouldn't shock me if the 3rd 1 had been vocalizing when I spotted it.  May 5, 2023 at Duke Island Park Photo 282300923, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) May 5, 2023 at Duke Island Park Photo 282301086, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) May 5, 2023 at Duke Island Park Photo 282301126, (c) jpviolette, some ri...

Last spring I saw 2 of the area birds noted for their mimicry of other sounds. The 1st 1 is a bird that commonly seen and even more often heard; if you hear what sounds like various birds, frogs, crickets, and/or an ambulance coming sequentially from a tree, there's a pretty good chance there's 1 Northern Mockingbird up there [1]. May 3, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 278557926, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) Next there's another bird that's around here often enough but that I mostly see in the spring, a Brown Thrasher  [2]. Though they don't look similar and aren't in the same genus as the Northern Mockingbird, they are in the same bird mimic family  [3]. Unlike the Northern Mockingbird who generally repeat a sound 3 times, the Brown Thrasher tends to repeat only twice, so you can sometimes distinguish them just by hearing them. May 3, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 278556938, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) [1] In my experience, there...

A couple weeks ago I encountered 2 (presumably) different Brown Thrashers ; at least I saw them almost 2 hours apart and a healthy walk away from each other. Because I don't see them very often I wasn't sure who I was seeing, but the leading candidates were the Brown Thrasher or the Wood Thrush . When I looked at the pictures at home and looked them up in my field guides, the long tail, streaky rather than spotty marks on the breast/belly, and lack of lines near the eye convinced me that I had Brown Thrashers. (Brown Thrashers are also quite a bit larger than Wood Thrushes, though without a "reference bird" like an American Robin nearby it's kind of hard to judge size.) Brown Thrashers are one of our general-purpose mimics, and it's believed that they have an even larger repertoire of songs than their Northern Mockingbird relatives. While the Northern Mockingbird will usually mimic a sound 3 times, the Brown Thrasher will mimic it only twice, making it possi...

Here's a Northern Mockingbird , though as I recall at the time it was not mocking anyone. This bird is probably our most common general-sound mimic. While Blue Jays do excellent Red-tailed Hawk and Red-shouldered Hawk impressions, Northern Mockingbirds have a wider repertoire. Jogging by the Robert Woods Johnson Hospital one morning I'm almost certain one was doing an ambulance siren. Many times you can identify them solely by sound when you hear one go through 5-6 different sounds one after the other, then start again at the beginning. (Sure, it's possible that you've got 6 different birds hiding in the same spot and taking turns singing ... but practically speaking you're probably safe in assuming you've got a mimic hiding up there.) A related bird, the Brown Thrasher , is similar. One way to differentiate them by sound is that the Northern Mockingbird repeats a sound 3 times while the Brown Thrasher repeats a sound twice. Another relative, the Gray Catbird ,...