Many years ago I had a student who had an interesting story about the Varied
Thrush song. He volunteered for a search and rescue group in Washington state.
This was long before the days of cell phones. When a searcher found the person
they were searching for or something of interest, they would blow a whistle.
Other searchers would hear the signal and come in its direction. Upon arriving,
they often could not find who gave the alert. Eventually, one of them followed
the sound of the signal and finally saw a bird that “sorta looked like a robin”
and it was singing what sounded exactly like their alert signal. No one in the
group was a birder so no one had a clue about Varied Thrush song until he
actually saw a singing bird. It apparently sent them on a lot of wild goose
(er… wild Varied Thrush) chases. They decided to change the signal they used to
solve the problem. Maybe someone in your neighborhood found one of these old
whistles. Perhaps you need to get up early and check it out. The worst you
could do is get a good look at a Varied Thrush out of season.
Dan Gleason
Owner, Wild Birds Unlimited of Eugene
Ornithology Instructor, retired, University of Oregon
dan-gleason@xxxxxxxxxxx
On Jul 13, 2021, at 4:34 PM, Tom McNamara <tmcmac67@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
2 oddities: ---- yesterday seems to have been a bit of a birding wormhole in
PDX. Many subscribers to Ebird alerts may have seen a report for a Canyon
Wren in suburban NE PDX. It was reported just after noon and seemed well
described and, very appropriately, the vocalization was characterized by the
reporter as " downright bizarre". No quarrel here, instead a contribution:
there I was lying awake in bed pre-6 a.m. yesterday when through the open
window I hear, perhaps 6-8 times, a.... Varied Thrush? This is in N. Tabor in
Ptown, elevation ~400 ft.
As many will know VATH is kinda up there with Hutton's Vireo in the
johnny-one-note competition--- not too tough to recognize or confuse with
something else. Hmmm. A few hours later, I remarked about it to my wife (up
and outta the bedroom by the time I heard it, never to be caught "sleeping
in" at the slacker hour of 5:50) and she said "yes!, I heard that too and was
going to tell you".
Options would seem to break along the lines of some sort of mimic, though I
can't ever recall hearing a starling, a Lesser Goldfinch or a Steller's Jay
doing a VATH (still, I won't put anything past these rascals) or some LOUD
playback enthusiast/wag .... who then took a bus up to northeast Portland for
the noon show? Uh, maybe not.
There ya go. Tom
