Meet the Varied Thrush birds of the Pacific Northwest. The Varied Thrush have been showing up along with other wintering birds for a couple years now!
The Varied Thrush are supposed to be rather shy birds, I guess as shy as any other bird who shows up here at the house? The Varied Thrush are not a bird that shows up at the feeder! So perhaps this is why they are called shy??
The one in the back of this photograph above I feel is the male, more flashier of the orange, the bird in focus is not so rich in color. I feel the front one is the female AND was noisier!
As seen in the above photograph!
The two did separate , the flashier colored one came closer to me so this is who is in the next couple of shots of this series. What the birds are looking for are apples, small ripe apples! Some years we have tons of them from the neighbors tree. Our walking path are full of the apples at curtain times of the year! This is what the Varied Thrush are here for , the fruit.
You can see the small apples here and there in many of these photographs.
This series of photographs was taken in February of 2014. Here it is Dec. of 2014 and ALL these apples are gone!! Several causes really, the main cause of the apples being gone now is this crazy weather we have had!! Bitter early cold, snow sent birds into early stress looking for food. The birds who already know of our home have hit everything hard!! Our flowering fruit tree has been bare for sometime, all the garden has been eaten up, and the neighbors tree here. Though we do have people living in this home now and they did trim and clean up under the tree and the tree really needed trimmed badly!! It was snapping under the weight of the apples and the snow, even on their roof!!
The pair of Varied Thrush really were not that far apart at all times. Far enough apart of course I could not get them in the same shot at all times however. Both the birds new I was there, I am not that quiet!! The other one did get very close, though I had just to much brush in my way. You can see I am not jumping up and down for the bird to see me!!
As you can see from the photograph above, I think I was making perhaps to much noise getting this one attention?
I have noticed while watching the Varied Thrush that the Robins and them do not get along. Robins will run off the Thrush! On this day there were not to many Robins around. There were also two Varied Thrush and not just one here too!
You may have noticed just how pretty these Varied Thrush really are! Other then the fruit barring tree’s the Varied Thrush are found in our tall pine tree as well. Maybe eating the pine cone seeds? I am sure there are insects in the tree as well?? It is hard for the snow to get where I have watched the Varied Thrush.
Back to what I feel is the female. Not as colorful. While the male got my attention where he was, she was in the garden . I did see her around the Spotted Towee and the pile of sunflowers where one of the Towee’s liked to go.
I do have a rather large series of shots of the Varied Thrush so I will make the photograph above the last shot. If you get a chance to see one of the beauties in real life gosh, do not pass up the opportunity to watch their behavior!
Thank you for coming by and checking out some of the photographs I got on this day of the pair of Varied Thrush birds here at home in the High Desert of Oregon!