You have probably seen more than normal of these around! Rich grey-blue back with a burnt orange bellied stocky birds just a little bit larger than a robin.
Spending most of their time in low shrubs and bushes, they eat insects and arthropods in the summer and mainly fruits and nuts in the winter. They will eat from ground feeders and native flowering shrubs is a good way to attract them to your yard.
They have a very loud trilling call, some people might call haunting! These birds will live in evergreen canopies in breeding season and will move to backyards and open green spaces in the winter.
We are one of the few areas that has year round residents of them, but they live all up and down the Pacific Coast from Alaska to Northern Mexico. Very territorial birds not getting along with any other species other than sometimes the American Robin, but will defend food sources as they need, males sometimes protecting their food from females and juveniles of their own species.
Varied Thrush populations go up and down in a 2 year cycle, and this year is obviously a big one.
