New bird in town

For the past week we've been enjoying watching a new visitor to our backyard. (Visitor for now and, I'm hoping, soon-to-be permanent resident.) Last Sunday morning I was gazing through our kitchen window when a flurry of motion caught my eye. I saw a bird I had never seen before, with striking cinnamon-colored feathers on its back. It was about the same size as a robin, and scurried around like a robin, so at first I assumed it was a juvenile of that species which had not yet attained its trademark red breast. But through binoculors I was struck by the sight of this bird's breast, which was marked by brown spots. So I consulted our bird book and quickly realized it wasn't a young robin at all, and finally decided that it had to be a brown thrasher. It's a truly beautiful bird, and has also been very fun to watch - it's very energetic and feisty (often at the expense of our robins), and while it spent the first few days rooting around in the soil for worms and bugs, it soon took a liking to the birdseed in the feeder.

Since I had never seen a brown thrasher around here, I assumed this one was migrating and just passing through, and would be gone soon. But a week has now passed, and the bird is still here. And just last night, we saw a second brown thrasher in the yard, so we're crossing our fingers that this is a mating pair that will make our backyard their home. I'm certainly going to keep that feeder filled as an enticement to the two of them.

By the way, that photo above isn't mine, but a stock photo from Wikipedia (full-sized image here) that gives a much better up-close look than I could take on my own.