Return of Bird of the Week: Veery

WC doesn’t have very good photos of Veery, another of the Catharus thrushes. In fact, WC has only seen the species three times: twice on High Island, Texas, immediately after the birds had flown non-stop across the Gulf of Mexico, and once, at considerable distance, in the community of Sea-Tac, Washington. And WC has never heard it sing.

Veery have an unusual migration pattern. The breeding territory extends from western Washington to the Martime provinces in Canada, but not at all in the American southwest or, except along the Appalachian Mountains, in the southern U.S. They have an extremely long migration, crossing the Gulf of Mexico and moving south to the southern half of the Amazon Basin. Not content with that, halfway through the non-breeding season they migrate again, west and southwest to far western Brazil. Of course, that makes their spring migration even longer. The…