Long-billed Thrasher

About the Long-billed Thrasher

The Long-billed Thrasher is the South Texas thrasher - a big, rusty-brown, streak-breasted bird with a long, slightly curved black bill, orange eyes, and a long tail. It looks very like the familiar Brown Thrasher of the East, but is grayer on the face, redder-eyed, longer-billed, and does not overlap with it for most of the year.

It is a bird of dense thorn scrub, spending most of its time on the ground beneath the brush, raking leaf litter aside with sideways sweeps of the bill for insects and fallen berries. In spring the male climbs to an exposed perch to sing a long, rich, mockingbird-like song of doubled phrases.

In Texas the Long-billed Thrasher is a year-round resident of the Rio Grande Valley and the brush country north to the Coastal Bend and southern Edwards Plateau - reaching the United States only in Texas, which makes it one of the Valley specialties visiting birders come to see.