Song thrush

Song thrush

Turdus musicus is a thrush that breeds across the West Palearctic. It has brown upper-parts and black-spotted cream or buff underparts. Its distinctive song, which has repeated musical phrases, has frequently been referred to in poetry. The species is much larger and more similar in flight than the mistle thrush and has white plumage and a red tail.

About Song thrush in brief

Summary Song thrushTurdus musicus is a thrush that breeds across the West Palearctic. It has brown upper-parts and black-spotted cream or buff underparts. Its distinctive song, which has repeated musical phrases, has frequently been referred to in poetry. The song thrush builds a neat mud-lined cup nest in a bush or tree. It is omnivorous and has the habit of using a favourite stone as an \”anvil\” on which to break open the shells of snails. Although it is not threatened globally, there have been serious population declines in parts of Europe, possibly due to changes in farming practices. The most similar European thrush species is the redwing thrush, but that bird has a strong supercilium and shows a red underwing. The nominate subspecies, T. philomelos, covers the majority of the species’ range. T. p. hebridensis, described by British ornithologist William Eagle Clarke in 1913, is a mainly sedentary form found in the Outer Hebrides and Isle of Skye in Scotland. Additional subspecies such as T. nataliae of Siberia, proposed by the Russian Sergei Buturlin in 1929, are not widely accepted. The bird is 20 to 23. 5 centimetres in length and weighs 50 grammes–107–107 grammes. The underwing is yellow and the bill is warmish yellow, the legs and feet are pink and the feet are warm, warm and pink. The juvenile resembles the adult, but has orange or buff streaks on the back and the back on the juvenile has orange and orange on the underside.

The species is much larger and more similar in flight than the mistle thrush and has white plumage and a red tail, although the Chinese thrush is much more similar, although it has a white tail and more red corners in its flight. It was described by Christian Ludwig Brehm in 1831, and still bears its original scientific name, Turdus philmelos. The specific epithet refers to a character in Greek mythology, Philomela, who had her tongue cut out, but was changed into a singing bird. The dialect names throstle and mavis both mean thrush. It breeds in forests, gardens and parks, and is partially migratory with many birds wintering in southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East; it has also been introduced into New Zealand and Australia. A molecular study indicated that the song Thrush’s closest relatives are the similarly plumaged mistle Thrush and Chinese Thrush. They are descended from ancestors that had colonised the Caribbean islands from Africa and subsequently reached Europe from there. The birds are less closely related to other European thrushes species such as the blackbird which are descended to the Caribbean from the African continent and subsequently spread north from there to the Americas and the Caribbean. It can be found in Britain, Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and possibly further east.