Figure 385. All but one of California’s 16 Curve-billed Thrashers have been found in the southeastern corner of the state. Most early records come from the lower Colorado River Valley, but most recent ones come from the Imperial Valley. The lone dot on the coastal slope refers to a bird found on 28 April 2002 at Otay Mesa, San Diego County.

 

Figure 386. This Curve-billed Thrasher, a first for San Bernardino County, was present 1 November 2003–18 March 2004 at Lake Havasu’s Black Meadow Wash (a.k.a. Black Meadow Landing). It was photographed there on 13 February 2004 (2004-027; Martin Meyers).

 

 

 

 

 

CURVE-BILLED THRASHER Toxostoma curvirostre (Swainson, 1827)

Accepted: 16 (67%)	Treated in Appendix H: yes
Not accepted: 8	CBRC review: all records
Not submitted/reviewed: 2	Color image: none

This thrasher is resident from southeastern Colorado, western Arizona, and central Texas south to Oaxaca in southern Mexico. The range extends as close to California as the foothills of the Black Mountains near Oatman, Arizona, about nine miles east of the state line northeast of Needles (Corman and Wise-Gervais 2005). Although generally considered sedentary, the species has managed to reach a host of states and provinces—most of them north of the normal range—including Idaho, central Montana (Montana Bird Records Committee data), central Alberta, southeastern Saskatchewan, southern Manitoba, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Louisiana, and the Florida panhandle.

California’s five earliest records of the Curve-billed Thrasher, all involving the most westerly subspecies, T. c. palmeri, refer to birds collected long ago in the lower Colorado River Valley: a female on 31 December 1916 (Huey 1920) and three females and a male during the winter of 1924/1925 (McCaskie and Prather 1965). Most modern records involve birds found during winter in the Imperial Valley, an area that receives more thorough observer coverage than does the lower Colorado River Valley. The three most recent records comprise two along the Colorado River and an apparent spring vagrant found on 28 April 2002 at Otay Mesa in San Diego County—the first Committee-endorsed record of this species from the coastal slope. See also Appendix H.

The Curve-billed Thrasher can be difficult to distinguish from Bendire’s Thrasher in the field. Indeed, photographs of a purported Curve-billed at the Salton Sea during winter 1964/1965 (McCaskie and Prather 1965) showed it to be a Bendire’s. Useful identification information was provided by Phillips et al. (1964), Kaufman (1990), and Kaufman and Bowers (1990).

 

[BLUE MOCKINGBIRD Melanotis caerulescens (Swainson, 1827) – see Supplemental List]