Day 76: If he had his druthers, this fellow would be eating insects, spiders and berries, a diet which is severely curtailed when there's two feet of snow on the ground, but he'll accept seeds, fruit and small nuts if they're offered. Oh, back up a minute...I need to translate for my non-American readers, don't I? "Druthers" is a shortened form of "I'd rather" or "would rather" and first came into use in the late 1800s. It was popularized later in a comic strip called "Li'l Abner" and is so much a part of the American vocabulary that we tend to forget that our Kiwi, Aussie and Brit cousins might fail to understand it. Anyway, back to Mr. Thrush. Yes, "Mr." This is a male, as evidenced by his bright colours. Females are more drab, as are juveniles. Native to the West Coast, this species is a unit unto itself. Once erroneously thought to be related to robins, even now, it is often mistaken for one. The second half of Varied Thrush's Latin binomial means "spotted," so if you see a "spotted robin," it's undoubtedly a thrush. And like "fish," the word "thrush" is either singular or plural, i.e., one thrush, two thrush, a dozen thrush. If I had my druthers, they'd be "thrushes."
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