What do curved billed thrashers eat

Digging Deeper: Milk and Immunity. Toxostoma curvirostre. Length: 11 in. A common garden bird in desert cities and suburbs, this thrasher also inhabits remote and dry desert areas.

It tosses leaves and dry vegetation on the ground far to the side with its long, sickle-shaped bill and uncovers the spiders, snails, insects it likes to eat. The Curve-billed Thrasher also enjoys seeds at feeders, and when it arrives all other species, even large doves, beat a hasty retreat. Both adults build the nest.

Curve-billed Thrasher is monogamous, solitary nester and mates for life. Female lays 1 to 5 pale blue green eggs, spotted with pale brown. Incubation lasts about 12 to 15 days, by both parents, but mostly by female. Chicks hatch altricial, and fledge at about 14 to 18 days after hatching. This species produces two broods per season. DIET : Curve-billed Thrasher eats mostly seeds and insects, such as beetles, ants, crickets and grasshoppers.

It also consumes berries and cacti fruits. Latin: Toxostoma crissale. Latin: Toxostoma lecontei. Latin: Toxostoma longirostre. Latin: Oreoscoptes montanus. Membership benefits include one year of Audubon magazine and the latest on birds and their habitats. Your support helps secure a future for birds at risk.

Our email newsletter shares the latest programs and initiatives. Of the various thrashers in the southwestern deserts, the Curve-bill is the most familiar and most often seen.

It makes itself more conspicuous than the rest, dashing about in the open, calling a loud whit-wheet! This thrasher readily moves into suburbs and cities in the Southwest as long as some native vegetation is planted there -- especially cholla cactus, its top choice for nest sites.

Photo gallery. Feeding Behavior Forages mostly on the ground, using its heavy curved bill to dig in the soil, to flip leaf-litter aside, and to turn over small rocks and other items. Eggs 3, sometimes Young Both parents feed young.

Diet Mostly insects and berries. Nesting Pair may remain together all year on permanent territory. Climate threats facing the Curve-billed Thrasher Choose a temperature scenario below to see which threats will affect this species as warming increases. It inhabits lower elevations from the Sea of Cortez eastward to the Gulf of Mexico.

Other populations appear to remain in the same area year round. In the desert basins of Arizona, New Mexico and western Texas, the curve-billed thrasher prefers shrub and grasslands that have cholla cacti, a choice plant for nesting. Along the mountain flanks, it favors thorny thickets at the edges of pinon pine and Gambel oak woodlands.

In its scrubby and prickly home, the bird moves in quick, darting runs or flys from bush to bush. Using its curved bill as the primary instrument for sorting, nervously and quickly, through plant litter and for digging in the soil, the bird seeks out cacti and other plant seeds as well as various insect prey. In season, it feeds on cacti fruit, which offers both nutrients and moisture during the months of drought. It may visit backyard seed feeders placed on the ground or hung from lower branches.

A curve-billed thrasher, with its mate, may proclaim territory by singing from perches at the perimeter, which can encompass several acres.