[mou] Varied Thrush in Hennepin County

[The Smiths]

I am new to this business of reporting unusual birds, but on Saturday
morning I saw very briefly a bird under my dogwood shrubs that could only
have been a female Varied Thrush.  I thought I was getting an unusual view
of a Robin, then realized it was one unusual Robin (what was that bright
orange throat and where did it get those garish orange stripes over its
eyes?)  As I realized it was no  Robin, it was off and I wasn't able to
relocate it.  A trip to Sibley made the id as a female Varied Thrush easy (I
would not have been too certain of its identity going by the more boldly
colored males in my other guides).  The orange throat, grey band across the
breast and paler orange belly were distinctive, but the orange supercilium
was the most distinctive.

It did not appear to be associated with any other birds in a flock of any
sort (I had the usual crowd of chickadees, nuthatches and house sparrows
flitting around but that was it.)  We are on Brockton Lane on the
Plymouth-Medina border just north of Mooney Lake.

Perhaps the current crummy weather will keep around, since it seems to be
way out of its usual range.

Joann Smith