Chasing Rarities: A Sage Thrasher at Stanislaus State University

I'm a little late to the birding party in terms of getting this post written, as my geology professor and fellow nature blogger, Garry Hayes, beat me to it with his article over at Geotripper's California Birds.  But I want in on some of the birding excitement too, so bear with me!

A Sage Thrasher is quite a rare find here in the Central Valley; before this bird, there have only been about a dozen sightings in Stanislaus County.  This individual was first spotted on the campus of Stanislaus State University almost two weeks ago by none other than my own father!  (I take full credit for getting him involved in birding, by the way!)

While out on one of his regular walks around the campus, he noticed a new bird along the Trans-California Pathway, a walking trail that meanders a few hundred yards along a man-made creek through vegetation representative of the plant communities found as one travels east and up in elevation from the valley floor into the Sierra Nevada.

I saw my dad a day or two later, and he proceeded to tell me about this odd bird he had seen, describing it as similar in color and pattern to a hermit thrush, but without the thrush's dark eyes.  This bird, he said, had yellow or golden eyes.  I asked about its behavior, which didn't seem thrush-like or like another common brown bird with a streaked chest that I suggested, a fox sparrow.  But the eye color had me stumped.  I shrugged, chocked it up to poor lighting, forgot about it, and didn't think about it again until last week when my mom mysteriously asked if Dad had told me about the bird he had found yet.  No, he hadn't...  But now my curiosity was piqued!

So when my regular "rare bird alert" e-mail came from eBird that day, I opened it immediately.  And there was Dad's report of the Sage Thrasher!  A rare find indeed!  Most Sage Thrashers that venture this far north stay in the hills and scrubland surrounding the Central Valley, so spotting one this close to home is a special treat.

Friday afternoon I found a little time to take a birding walk with Dad on campus, and we spotted the bird right away, in an elderberry bush along the creek.  Other birders have been eagerly flocking to the site over the last couple of days to get a look at this rare bird.  And even better than spotting a rare bird... is spotting one so willing to sit still for photographs!

Though not as striking as January's rarity, the Vermillion Flycatcher, Sage Thrashers are beautiful birds in their own right.  The first time I saw one was within its normal range, sage brush and desert areas of southern California, while camping along the Salton Sea.

During the breeding season, Sage Thrashers actually range quite far to the north in the Great Basin desert; winters are typically spent in the desert Southwest and Mexico.  However, it is possible that the individual at Stanislaus State could overwinter here.

The winter diet of the Sage Thrasher consists largely of berries, and there is an abundance of ripe native elderberries and toyon berries along the Trans-California Pathway.

And so you see just one of the reasons why it is so beneficial to fill our gardens and landscapes with native plants!  In this case, they brought a rare bird nearly to our back door!