[mou] Varied Thrush-Clay County

[Benjamin Fritchman]

This afternoon I decided to take a quick trip to try and refind the Moorhead 
Gray Jay reported a few weeks back. Unfortunately, I still have not refound 
it. But, as I was leaving the area, I decided to stop by some crabapple 
trees to look for waxwings. A couple weeks ago, there were several Cedar 
Waxwings and a Robin at this location. Today, they was a flock of turkeys 
there sitting in the crabapple trees, eating berries. As I was watching the 
turkeys, I noticed a robin sized bird in one of the trees among the turkeys, 
and assuming it was the robin, I put my binoculars up. Immediately I 
realized it was a Varied Thrush! It was a gorgeous bird, and I got some 
great looks at it. The time was 4:15. The line of crabapples extends back 
from the road, so it's not always easy to see everything in these 
crabapples. I quickly lost the bird as it flew around, but soon relocated it 
in the adjacent yard to the east. It was feeding on the ground under a large 
pine in front of the house. It continued to fly back and forth between the 
crabapples and the ground. After 15 minutes I lost the bird for good, but 
presumably it's still around, because there are a lot of berries still on 
the trees, and a lot of pines for cover. Also, 2 yards to the east of the 
crabapples had a feeder, with a lot of seed on the ground, where numerous 
juncos were feeding, so the Thrush may be drawn to this yard as well.

The location is in north Moorhead, I believe Oakport township. I found it 
along Wall Street Ave. N. This is also a County Road, but my map doesn't say 
the number, and I've forgotten the exact number. I didn't get mileage from 
Hwy. 75, but looking at the map, it appears to be roughly 1.1 miles west of 
Hwy. 75. The house numbers to look for the bird at are 608 and 612 on the 
north side of Wall St. Ave. N. The line of crabapples are just to the west 
of these yards on the other side of a fence.
Also here were 2 Cedar Waxwings in the crabapples, and a flock of 7 more 
waxwings that flew over, which I didn't see long enough to tell if they were 
Bohemians or not. This location is very close to where the Gray Jay had been 
seen, so if you go to look for this bird, don't skip looking for the Gray 
Jay also, although it hasn't been reported in quite some time.

Good luck,
Ben Fritchman,
NDSU, Fargo, ND

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