Long-billed Thrasher

Toxostoma longirostre

Order PASSERIFORMES - Family MIMIDAE

Menu

1. Cool Facts
2. Description
3. Similar Species
4. Sound
5. Range
6. Habitat
7. Food
8. Behavior
9. Reproduction
10. Conservation Status
11. Other Names

A resident of dense brushy habitats, the Long-billed Thrasher is found only in southern Texas and eastern Mexico. It closely resembles its rustier relative, the Brown Thrasher, which spends the winter in some of the same areas.

Cool Facts

• Although the Long-billed Thrasher has a longer bill than the similar-looking Brown Thrasher, it does not have a particularly long bill for a thrasher. Le Conte's and California thrashers, and even fellow Texan Crissal Thrasher have much longer and more strongly curved bills.
• The Long-billed Thrasher has a long and complicated song like other thrashers and mockingbirds, but it is not known to include mimicry in its repertoire.

Description

• Size: 26-29 cm (10-11 in)
• Wingspan: 33 cm (13 in)
• Weight: 68 g (2.4 ounces)

• Large, long-tailed songbird.
• Upperparts grayish brown.
• Underparts white with black streaking.

• Cheeks gray.
• Tail long and reddish brown.
• Two whitish wingbars.
• Bill black and slightly down-curved.
• Undertail streaked.
• Eyes orange or yellow.
• Legs dull brown.

Sex Differences

Sexes look alike.

Immature

Juvenile looks similar to adult, but duller, and with indistinct buff spotting on nape and rump, buff wingbars, and yellow eyes.

Similar Species

• Brown Thrasher very similar, but is more reddish on back and tail, has a more brownish face, a shorter bill with a pale base to the lower mandible, unstreaked undertail coverts, and a yellow eye. Long-billed Thrasher does not repeat phrases in its song as constantly as the Brown Thrasher does.
• Curve-billed Thrasher is grayish, lacks black stripes, and has a longer, more curved bill.

Sound

Song is a long series of rich, warbled, variable phrases. Phrases may be given two to four times. Call note is a mellow, descending "kleak" or rich, whistled "chee-ooep."

»listen to songs of this species

Range

Summer Range

Resident from southern Texas through eastern Mexico.

Habitat

Riparian woodland and dense, scrubby thickets, especially of mesquite.

Food

Insects, spiders, snails, and berries.

Behavior

Foraging

Forages on ground, by sweeping bill side to side in leaf litter. Tosses aside leaf litter and twigs.

Reproduction

Nest Type

A bulky cup made of thorny twigs, lined with grass, straw, bark, or rootlets. Nest in center of dense thickets under large trees.

Egg Description

Pale greenish white, minutely and heavily speckled with dingy brown markings.

Clutch Size

2-5 eggs.

Condition at Hatching

Helpless, with scattered tufts of black down.

Conservation Status

Clearing of brushland for agriculture caused decline of Long-billed Thrashers in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas over the last century. Given no special status.

Other Names

Moqueur à long bec (French)
Cuitlacoche pico largo, Cuitlacoche (Spanish)
Sennetts Thrasher (English)

Sources used to construct this page:

Tweit, R. C. 1997. Long-billed Thrasher (Toxostoma longirostre). In The Birds of North America, No. 317 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, PA, and The American Ornithologists' Union, Washington, D.C.