This Bendire’s Thrasher was a fun ID challenge during our recent visit to Arizona. They look quite similar to Curve-billed Thrashers, which are fairly common in the area so we wanted to make sure that we had found the correct bird. We studied this bird and two others sharing a bush at a long distance for quite a while before we determined that we had what we were looking for and then to our amazement this character came in for what seemed like a closer look at us! At that point we were fully satisfied that the beak was short and strait enough to not be a Curve-billed and the triangular breast spots became fairly obvious as well. I think we were all happy that we gave the bird extra time.

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Toxostoma bendirei