Curve-billed Thrasher

Toxostoma curvirostre

Order PASSERIFORMES - Family MIMIDAE

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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 common bird of the arid Southwest, the Curve-billed Thrasher occurs in a range of habitats. Perhaps because of its broader tolerances, it is the most widespread of the western thrashers.

Cool Facts

• The Curve-billed Thrasher that lives in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and northwestern Mexico looks different than the form that lives in the Chihuahuan Desert of Texas and central Mexico, and they may be separate species. The Texas and eastern bird has a lighter breast, more contrasting spots, pale wingbars, and white tail corners. The more western form has a grayer breast with less obvious spots, inconspicuous wingbars, and smaller, more grayish tail corners.

Description

• Size: 27 cm (11 in)
• Wingspan: 34 cm (13 in)
• Weight: 85 g (3.0 ounces)

• Large, long-tailed songbird.
• Dull grayish brown all over.
• Long, thin, slightly down-curved bill.
• Faint spots on chest and belly.

• Eyes pale orange.
• White or gray corners to tail.
• Bill and legs blackish.

Sex Differences

Sexes look alike.

Immature

Similar to adult, but with shorter, straighter bill, more yellow eyes, and less obvious spots.

Similar Species

• Bendire's Thrasher has shorter, straighter bill with a pale area at the base, finer, more triangular spots on breast, and yellower eyes. Juvenile Curved-bill Thrasher may have yellow eyes and straighter bill.
• Crissal Thrasher has plain breast and dark rusty under the tail.

Sound

Song is a musical series of unrepeated notes and phrases. Call is a sharp, whistled "whit-weet."

»listen to songs of this species

Range

Summer Range

Resident from southern Arizona to very southwestern Colorado to the Texas coast, southward to southern Mexico

Habitat

Thorn brush and scrub, semi-desert (especially where mesquite or cholla cactus is present), shrubby areas, open brushy woodland, and around towns .

Food

Insects, seeds, berries.

Behavior

Foraging

Forages on ground, pokes and probes in plant litter, and digs holes in the soil with its long, down-curved bill.

Reproduction

Nest Type

Deep cup of twigs, lined with grasses or other fine materials, placed in a cholla cactus or spiny shrub.

Egg Description

Light bluish green, heavily spotted with reddish brown.

Clutch Size

3-5 eggs.

Condition at Hatching

Helpless.

Conservation Status

Relatively common. Loss of habitat to urban development and agriculture may be causing declines in some areas.

Other Names

Moqueur à bec courbe (French)
Cuitlacoche piquicurvo (Spanish)

Sources used to construct this page:

Tweit, R. C. 1996. Curve-billed Thrasher (Toxostoma curvirostre). In The Birds of North America, No. 235 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, PA, and The American Ornithologists Union, Washington, D.C.