I’m not a superstitious guy.
Welllll… maybe I do have this thing where I sip a Beefeater martini during any important game the Cleveland Cavs, Guardians, or Browns (lol) are playing… and maybe when I’m watching a game and my team is playing well, I do feel compelled to not adjust where I’m sitting or even the position I’m sitting in for as long as the hot streak lasts… and yeah maybe on the day of the game I do light 500 candles and speak a Latin incantation summoning wingéd demon-gods from their shadow kingdom to fill the hearts of the opponent with cravenness and despair…
Okay, so I am superstitious, and given the success of Cleveland teams over the span of my 50 years on Earth, it occurs to me now that I might consider an alternative set of superstitions.
But enough about sports (for now). When it comes to birds, I don’t know that I’m particularly superstitious.
Or am I?
My friend Sofia has a trick for when she’s preparing to chase a new life bird—she opens her field guide to the target bird’s page and leaves it open until the bird is found. That trick has an impeccable track record of success—100% according to her most recent report. I personally know of only one failed chase for Sofia—when we ditched our futile search for a Ruffed Grouse last spring and decided to seek out a confirmed Eurasian Wigeon. We didn’t get it, but that wasn’t the field guide’s fault—Sofia never had a chance to open it.
So on the eve of last Tuesday’s planned chase of a western bird that had recently shown up in Butler County, about an hour north of Pittsburgh, I sent Sofia a quick text.
Open that field guide to VATH
She quickly replied,
You just saved our trip I had totally blanked on that
What’s VATH, you ask? For those who may not know, every bird species North and Central America has been assigned a banding code, a four-letter, all-caps abbreviation. The basic rules for formulating the codes are simple, and the results are often fun!
One-word bird name: the first four letters (Ovenbird = OVEN)
Two-word: the first two letters of each word (Horned Lark = HOLA)
Three-word: first letter of the first two words, first two letters of the third word (Worm-eating Warbler = WEWA)
Four-word: first letter of each word (Yellow-crowned Night Heron = YCNH. Okay, that one’s not so fun)
Banding refers to the practice of capturing birds and placing an identifying metal ring around their leg or neck (all while checking the bird’s weight, length, age, health, etc). The codes are a shorthand meant to optimize data entry for researchers, sparing them the arduous task of writing, say, Northern Beardless-Tyrannulet over and over until they want to shake their arthritic fists at every tyrannulet they see, bearded, beardless, or otherwise.
Laziness is what motivated me to text a banding code, but Sofia knew exactly what VATH meant.
Varied Thrush.
Ah, thrushes. Family Turdidae. What a wonderful branch in the bird family tree. Rotund beauties with sometimes incredible vocal repertoires you can often find foraging on the ground or in the brush at eye level. They can be secretive and well camouflaged, but their size and propensity to sing and chip make them, in my experience, less of a challenge to find than other skulkers I can name (yep, I’m still talking shit about you, Connecticut Warbler).
Some 200 species of thrush are distributed all around the world. The suite we normally encounter in the eastern US range from the understated…
… to the brightly colored.
In terms of looks, the Varied Thrush would most easily be mistaken for an American Robin.
Still, they’re distinctive enough to tell apart with a reasonably good look, so no surprise a birder was able to pick out the Varied Thrush that appeared in State Game Lands 96 in Butler County in late January.
Also no surprise the birders of the region quickly flocked to the site. I didn’t chase the Varied Thrush that showed up in Michigan in 2022. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.
But first—what’s a denizen of wet, western forests doing all the way over here? Great question! Check out the Varied Thrush’s range map.
As you can see, western Montana is about as eastern as this bird tends to get. But see the light blue dotted line jutting all the way out to Nova Scotia? That means the bird is an uncommon winter vagrant over a huge swath of the northern United States. But why? I’m not sure what forces compel Varied Thrushes to venture so far our of their typical range, be it weather, a glitch in their navigational systems, or just sheer curiosity. Perhaps this fellow had heard tell of the many splendors of Butler County, PA and simply couldn’t stay away. The scant research I’ve done has led to no answers, but if you know the reason behind (or have a theory for) this phenomenon, feel free to leave a comment!👇
Last week I introduced you to my quartet of birding friends, the H.E.N.S. This time, Elizabeth, Nate, and Sofia were able to make the trip north, with only Holly previously indisposed.
So on Tuesday morning, I picked up Sofia, and we headed to Elizabeth’s house. The three of us piled into Elizabeth’s car and the E.N.S. were off to Butler County.
A fellow Allegheny County birder had kindly dropped GPS coordinates into the Discord chat, and we arrived at the location to find this lovely scene.
We closed the car doors and opened our ears. Pretty enough, but utterly devoid of birds. Silence prevailed. Almost. There was a distant Blue Jay, and something else.
Do you hear a voice? Elizabeth asked. We could hear two voices, actually, not too far off, but their owners were in range of neither our eyeballs nor binoculars. I had a hunch that the voices we heard were on the same mission, and after some quick research on my phone, I discovered we had been led to the wrong spot. Where we wanted to be was roughly from whence the voices had come. We climbed back in the car and sped (as fast as the snowy road would allow) to the locale that hopefully would be full of birds and birders. Sure enough, two human individuals were on the scene, bundled against the cold and equipped with cameras and binoculars. Now we were talking!
We introduced ourselves. I recognized one of their names, but I had never met Zach Vaughan, whom I knew by reputation as one of the best bird photographers working around Allegheny County. The thrush was present, he informed us, and had been moving back and forth between a stand of tall evergreens and the spot Zach had staked out in front of the fruit-laden trees and shrubs the bird was feeding from.
The thrush wasn’t the only one feasting in State Game Lands 95. Plenty of other birds were on hand to keep us busy while we waited. A sizeable flock of Black-capped Chickadees. Several White-throated Sparrows. American Goldfinches, Tufted Titmouses, White-breasted Nuthatches—all the birds you’d expect to see in a western PA winter.
There was a beautiful flock of Cedar Waxwings, too.
A tidy row of Northern Cardinals.
And then, perhaps 15 minutes after our arrival, the object of our pursuit revealed himself, a glorious male bedecked in black, blue-gray, and fiery orange. I’ve always thought no thrush could surpass the beauty of the Wood Thrush, but this Varied Thrush had come all the way to Pennsylvania with one directive for us easterners—Hold my beer.
What a bird! Bulbous and blazing orange! Black mask and beautiful wing bars! It’s as though an American Robin and a Blackburnian Warbler had gotten into some fermented fruit and let one thing lead to another.
We stayed for as long as the bird did, long enough for wonderful looks and sufficiently good photos. When he retreated back to the pines, we retreated to our transportation.
Less superstition than celebration, I have a some rituals of my own for after getting a new life bird. For one, I like to drink a shot of rye whiskey. Not an option right now while I’m doing a dry month. I also open my gigantic coffee table edition of Audubon’s Birds of America to the bird I found. (Yes, I’m very aware of JJA’s, ahem, questionable character, which is a whole post for the future.) The book, practically a coffee table unto itself, contains hundreds of Audubon’s renderings, some more masterful than others, but I have to give him credit for his Varied Thrush. Knocked out of park.
As of today, the Butler County Varied Thrush continues to show well at the same location. Whatever lured him there, the incendiary orb became life bird #577 for me and my first of 2026. Life bird for my fellow travelers as well. We thank him for his vagrancy. How long he’ll stay, we’ll have to see. Here’s hoping he’ll be welcomed back to his breeding grounds after making this long winter pilgrimage. Here’s also hoping he hooks up with a female of his species and not a Blackburnian Warbler. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Super Bowl note—I have no delusions about the Browns ever appearing in the Super Bowl, played earlier tonight. But the Super Bowl goes on without them. This year, I rooted for the Seahawks, named for a bird and led by a birder quarterback, to beat the Patriots, whom I hate. Beat them they did, and without any superstitious help, or hindrance, from me.
Go Browns.
Zach has an impressive camera setup. But equipment can only get you so far. It’s another thing altogether to know how to use it, and more importantly—to have the patience and artistic eye to capture a bird at just the right moment, like he did with the very same Varied Thrush. Want more? Check out his website, linked above, and follow Zach’s Instagram for some beautifully detailed bird closeups.
I recently surpassed 900 subscribers. The growth in my readership has been so rewarding, as has the wonderful engagement my posts have gotten since launching this venture in October 2024. Thank you, subscribers for teaming up with the birds to motivate me every day to keep writing, keep taking photos, keep podcasting.
Current subscriber count—911
That’s all for this week. Have you ever seen a Varied Thrush? Have you gotten any life birds yet this year? Do you have any superstitions in your birding life? Do you have any rituals to prepare for or celebrate a new life bird? As always, the comments are open👇
nwb ♎︎
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This post was human generated. All media by Nathaniel Bowler.
Developmental edits by Alexandra Hidalgo.
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