First, Rachel your photos are INCREDIBLE!! And thanks for the info. I don't think I've seen a wood thrush from your explanation, just the Brown Thrasher. Hey Donna, here we are another year...hope it's a quiet one :) Anyway, last year a Brown Thrasher made a nest in the most unlikely place IMO. In a abelia bush (attracts bees) right next to the steps from the deck to the ground, the steps that my husband and I and 4 dogs pass CLOSELY every day, several times a day. Somedays I'd just see the beak of the one on the nest. There were 3 eggs but only 1 hatched. One day the 3 eggs were there, the next day just 1. The baby thrasher was cute as cute could be. I watched it takes its first 'tumble' out of the nest and then it's first flight. My DH cut back the bush TOO MUCH (I said 'trim it.' Grrrr......... Oh well, maybe it will find a place to nest where I can still watch it. Now if I can only find the wood thrush who's singing the non-thraster/mocker/catbird song. Do they nest like the thrashers and robins do? Thanks again, Linda...

Our desert Thrashers will peck tomatoes open to get the juice, Brown thrashers are omnivores, so maybe they are pecking open the peppers to get the developing seeds. The cabbage - maybe a rabbit or rodent.

This really has become the year of the thrashers. Per Donna's suggestion, I've been putting out C&S Peanut suet nuggets. I don't know if the thrashers eat it - I haven't seen it - but it's disappearing. There's plenty of other food around and insects too. My yard/garden is getting more and more overgrown so there are lots of hiding places for birds in shrubs and small trees. I'll walk by a shrub not noticing any birds and be startled by flight all around me. Good for the birds, not so good for the idea of a tidy garden. An adult has been seen brazenly foraging around most days, and yesterday I saw what I think are two juveniles calmly preening on the winterberry (the photos were taken from the kitchen window). So much for the "secretive" Brown Thrasher. Claire

Thanks! It just pleased me to see a bird that's usually very secretive suddenly come forward and enjoy itself in front of the camera. The sand and stones was an afterthought - I live in New England and it's always a pain to get a pole into the ground in between the subsurface rocks. Being on the coast, I have plenty of sand and stones. It's pouring rain now, and it must be hard for the hummers to get nectar from flowers or find insects. They're fighting over the feeder which has an umbrella over it so it's reasonably dry. Sort of like sitting on the porch with a drink watching the rain. Claire