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
