I Tame The California Thrasher

The California Thrasher is a secretive fellow. He enjoys poking around on the forest floor, searching for grubs, seeds, and insects among the decaying leaves and other detritus. You hardly ever see a California Thrasher out in the open, and they rarely fly for any great distances, preferring to walk along slowly but surely, covering a great amount of territory in this manner.

            Now, in spite of their better instincts, I did mange to entice a few of these California Thrashers into visiting my yard on a regular basis. The thrashers learned that I placed mixed birdseed not only in the platform feeder in my side yard, but on the grass itself, just under and beside the platform feeder.

            So, every day now, they make a ritual out of visiting my lawn and platform feeder to help themselves to not only mixed birdseed, but Cheerios and even tortilla chips.

            The thrasher has a tough time eating Cheerios. He doesn’t swallow them whole, and his beak isn’t designed for pecking at things, but rather, for brushing around in the dirt and grabbing small items in the tip of his beak and then throwing these items into his throat and gullet with a small, backward movement of his head. So when the thrasher picks up a Cheerio in the tip of his beak, he runs into the underbrush with the Cheerio dangling from his lower bill and held firm by the upper bill. I presume he takes his time then with the Cheerio, nibbling away at it until it disappears. He does the same thing with a tortilla chip, picking it up in his beak and running into the underbrush in order to polish it off.

            However, he has uncanny precision when it comes to eating mixed birdseed. He eschews black oil sunflower seeds (not wanting to have to peck them open), but he is deadly accurate when it comes to picking up milo and millet seeds off of the ground, or from the platform feeder. He picks these seeds up one by one, even the tiniest millet seed, so that it appears as a tiny, white speck just barely visible in the tip of his bill.

            The California Thrasher works his way into my yard in a slow, methodical fashion. First, he announces his presence at the far side of the pool with his distinctive, high-pitched “chirp” call, which is more like a squawk than a peep. He repeats this call every fifteen or twenty seconds or so, as he either walks around the side of the pool along the patio, or sneaks in through the bushes that line the side yard. In either case, his chirps get louder and louder the closer he gets to the food, but as soon as he starts eating, he becomes totally silent.

            He’s also a terror at the platform feeder. With his long, decurved bill, he runs at anyone who so much as dares to land on the feeder, and whether it’s a Scrub Jay or even a Mourning Dove, the offending party flies off of the feeder before the thrasher gets close enough to do any damage with that sharp bill. I think the thrasher is just bluffing, but regardless, once he gains control of the platform feeder, he pigs out up there until he is satiated—which sometimes can take up to twenty minutes or so.

            Now, there are times when the California Thrasher actually sings. I doubt that there are many people in my neighborhood who are aware of this, or who know that it is a California Thrasher that they are hearing. But I have been walking into Sullivan Canyon on numerous occasions when I’ve heard a high-pitched whistling sound that resembles the squeaking sound that a dolphin makes. You would think that this was a House Wren that you were listening to, or perhaps a Wrentit, or a Northern Mockingbird imitating somebody—but no. Pull the binoculars up to your eyes, scan the top branch of a willow and what do you see perched there and whistling away for all he’s worth but a California Thrasher—and no doubt, a happy one at that!

            One day in late April, I was photographing a California Thrasher in my side yard. After taking one shot, I was dismayed to see this bird walk casually off of the grass and into the bushes. I called out to him to wait and allow me to take one more shot, and he obliged me, stopping to take a sip from a puddle that had formed from a running hose that I had placed in the flower bed. Then, he disappeared into the bushes.