Birding by Dawn's Early Light

I was able to sleep in until 8:00 AM again today, being it's a Federal holiday. I make a habit of looking out the upstairs bathroom window in the morning to see if there is any activity at the bird feeder in the backyard. This morning paid off very well - a very large bird that looked reddish was foraging at the base of the feeder support pole. I quickly

Brown Thrasher

made it downstairs, grabbed the binoculars, and peeked out between the drapes over the patio glass door window. This was a new sighting, I thought at first it was some sort of thrush. A male Northern Cardinal was perched on the fence above, and provided a good size scaling for reference - one whole size smaller than the bird on the ground. Viewed close up with the binoculars, the bird had very distinctive mottling on the breast. I went and grabbed my Nikon D3100 with the AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 55-200mm f/4-5.6G IF-ED lense already attached from the night before picture taking of the boeuf bourguignon dinner, but by the time I got back to the window, the bird was gone. So out came the Peterson Field Guide: thrushes - too small, only 7 inches long, the same as the cardinal; Fieldfare - from Iceland, has been see in the Northeast, looks large enough, but the coloring is not red enough; Brown Thrasher - 11 1/2 inches long, bright rufous above, heavily streaked below. Rather curved bill, long tail. Habitats thickets, brush, shrubbery. This may have been the bird I saw out the bedroom window the other day that was in the tree in the neighbor's yard.