Do you ever get that feeling that something is different? Like something has changed? I felt like that recently when I pulled my vehicle up into my driveway. I looked around a little bit trying to figure out what it was. I looked up into some tall bushes that are next to my driveway. I then understood the change. There was a bird I didn’t recognize as the leaves of the bushes camouflaged her. She flew out of the bushes from the other side. I waited quietly for a few minutes. When she came back to the bushes I saw a Brown Thrasher carrying a twig and some moss in her beak. She flew off again. While she was gone I took a closer look at where she was at within the bushes. She was building a nest! I was so excited to have a bird building a nest so close to my home.

For the next few days I watched her building her nest. A twig here and some moss there. I looked up into her nest while she was gone and I saw what appeared to be an egg. I didn’t want to get too close to her nest so I didn’t know how many eggs she had laid. While I waited for several days for the grand day to arrive I took lots of pictures and some video of the Brown Thrasher and her nest.

A few days had past when I parked my vehicle in my driveway when I noticed a Brown Thrasher feeding 1 baby bird. This made my day as I have never had the opportunity to see a baby bird being fed in its own nest. As I continued to sit in my vehicle I watched both the Brown Thrashers taking turns bringing the baby bird small bugs and worms.

Brown Thrashers are found year round in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina. During some winter months you may find the Brown Thrashers spending time in Maryland and Virginia.

On April 6th, 1935 the State of Georgia made the Brown Thrasher the State Bird of Georgia. The Brown Thrashers were chosen because they were seen in Atlanta, Georgia all year long.

The Brown Thrasher is the size of the American Robin but they are more slender. They have a long brownish orange tail and wings. Their wings are short and they have white wing bars. The Brown Thrasher’s bill is somewhat curved and thick. Their face is gray and their eyes are yellow. Their under parts are white with heavy brown and black streaking.

Both male and female build a cup-shaped nest. They use twigs, grass, bark strips, leaves and roots lined with hair and feathers in low trees, bushes, vines, stumps, brush heaps and even on the ground.

The Brown Thrashers eat different types of foods, such as insects, beetles, earthworms, snails, berries, nuts and seeds. They spend lots of time searching for food in dry leaves on the ground, and they can be heard underneath the bushes moving leaf litter with their bills.

Female Brown Thrashers lay three to five eggs and incubates them for a period of eleven to fourteen days. The young fledge nine to thirteen days after hatching. Brown Thrasher chicks are very cute when they fledge. They’re very awkward and curious. The pair may raise two or three broods a year, nesting from late March through July.

The Brown Thrashers are wonderful mimics and have one of the largest song repertoires of any North American bird. They belong to the same family as the mockingbirds. The differences between them are: Mockingbirds repeat phrases many times and are capable of retaining and reproducing up to 200 different sounds from a variety of subjects. Brown Thrashers are capable of retaining and reproducing up to 3000 different sounds and usually emit the song twice.

Two days after this video was taken there was a thunder storm with very strong winds that knocked over a few oak trees. I haven’t seen the birds return to the nest since the storm. The nest was built to withstand these strong winds as the nest is still there in the bushes.