Sage Thrasher

I almost forgot the Sage Thrasher, an elevation migrant. They breed in the Sage brush flats but move up into the Pinon/Juniper belt, for the winter. A great songster and neighbor.

And from the Birds of North America, Cornell Lab of Ornithology:
Originally called the Mountain Mockingbird, the Sage Thrasher was first collected for science by John Kirk Townsend from the sagebrush plains along Sandy Creek near South Pass in southwestern Wyoming in 1834. In a coup exemplifying the competitive spirit of exploration and species discovery in the early 1800s, John J. Audubon managed to obtain the original specimen while Townsend was still afield and introduced the species to the scientific community (Mearns and Mearns 1992a). In an effort to salvage credit for his friend, Thomas Nuttall wrote the original description of the species and published it under Townsend's name (Townsend 1837, Mearns and Mearns 1992a).