first. The fledging period ranges from 11 to 18 days. Feeding The curve-billed thrasher is an omnivore. Its diet includes invertebrates such as beetles, moths, butterflies, arachnids, and snails. It also eats vegetable matter, and fruits from cacti, prickly pear, hackberries, and anacua, among other plants. The curve-billed has also been spotted eating dog food, and will feed it to their chicks. They are ground feeders, and not well adapting to climbing on branches. Thrashers will take surface prey, but will also dig holes more than deep to search for food. Curve-billeds will also sip nectar from saguaro blossoms and eat insects trapped within, serving as pollinators in the process. They also have great love for the resulting saguaro fruits, which is an important source of water in dry months.:168-187 Threats Predators, which mainly focus on young birds, include snakes, coyotes, and roadrunners. This may account for very low brood success in the species, as only 20% of nests are successful in a year.:183-185 Curve-billed thrashers share a very similar range to the cactus wren, as well as a favorite species to nest in: the jumping cholla. Because of this, interspecific conflict is frequent. Fights over food are rare, but fights to protect fledglings are heated. They will vigorously work to destroy each other's nests, although typically only roosting nests, not breeding nests, are destroyed. Despite this, nests of curve-billeds and cactus wrens may still be concurrently and successfully raised even feet away from each other. Anderson & Anderson noted a minimum nest distance of a highly unusual 15 centimetres (neither nest was destroyed by the either throughout the entire season), although average interspecies nest distances were well over thirty metres. Nest destruction is almost always unsuccessful, and less intense, during breeding times, as both species adamantly defend their own nests. Once breeding season wanes, and fledglings emerge, competition becomes more fierce.:168-187 Status Although its populations is declining, the curve-billed thrasher is rated as a species of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. References External links Curve-billed Thrasher Species Account - Cornell Lab of Ornithology Curve-billed Thrasher - Toxostoma curvirostre - USGS Patuxent Bird Identification InfoCenter Curve-billed Thrasher photo gallery VIREO curve-billed thrasher Native birds of the Southwestern United States Birds of Mexico Birds of the Rio Grande valleys Fauna of the Chihuahuan Desert Fauna of the Sonoran Desert Endemic birds of Southwestern North America curve-billed