California Thrasher
Toxostoma redivivum
California Thrasher · San Diego · 6 March 2026
A California Thrasher in the chaparral at the edge of a San Diego garden, a bird found nowhere outside California and northern Baja. It lives in dense scrub and covers ground on foot under cover rather than crossing open space on the wing, and it is a notoriously reluctant flier.
The long, strongly downcurved bill is unmistakable and belongs to no other bird in this range, built for sweeping through leaf litter and loose soil after insects, more like a scythe than a probe. It is a mimic, too, and its song borrows from every bird in the canyon.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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