Sage Thrasher

Description:

Sage Thrashers are light-colored, streaked thrashers, with long, strong legs, long tails, and pale eyes. They have straight bills, which are shorter than those of other thrashers. Sage Thrashers are slightly smaller than American Robins, with light, gray-brown upperparts with light streaking, and buff-to-white underparts with heavy streaking. They show white corners on their tails in flight.

Habitat:

Spotted in scrub land - an almost desert like area with sagebrush and low growing shrubs. Sage Thrashers are locally common breeding birds in eastern Washington sagebrush habitats from the end of March to mid-August.

Notes:

Range-wide, Sage Thrashers have dramatically declined in many areas and have been extirpated from some. The species is listed as a species-at-risk by the Gap Analysis Project and Audubon-Washington and is a candidate for endangered-species listing by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Much of Washington's sagebrush habitat has been converted to agriculture, and the remaining habitat is becoming increasingly fragmented. Sage Thrashers are still common in appropriate habitat, and they may be able to tolerate fragmentation better than some species. However, where there is introduced cheatgrass, shrub-steppe becomes unattractive to Sage Thrashers. Thus increased protection of sagebrush is needed to assure that these thrashers remain common.