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Song Thrush

Song Thrush

Turdus philomelos

Identify the Song Thrush by sound or photo and log your sightings with Birdpass.

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The Song Thrush is a familiar thrush of woods and gardens across Europe and western Asia, warm brown above with neat dark spots on its buff-white underparts. Its loud song of short, musical phrases, each repeated two or three times, has long inspired poets. Northern and eastern birds migrate to western and southern Europe for the winter. It has been introduced to New Zealand and Australia.

Did you know?

  • It uses a favourite stone as an “anvil” to smash snail shells.
  • For its size it has one of the loudest bird voices.

Voice

Song
Flight call
Alarm call

About the species

Identification

A medium-sized thrush with a grey-brown back and pale underparts, the breast and flanks densely spotted with dark arrowheads. The underwing coverts are yellowish-buff (rusty red in Redwing), and there is no clear supercilium. It is smaller and warmer brown than Mistle Thrush. The call is a sharp “tsip”, and the male's song is clear and melodious, with repeated phrases.

Family

Turdidae

Size

Medium (thrush)

Colours

brown, white, black, orange

About the habitat

Coniferous, broadleaf and mixed woodland, forest edges, parks, gardens, hedgerows and scrub with cover for nesting and open ground or leaf litter for feeding.

Diet

Mainly earthworms, insects and other invertebrates; famously snails, which it smashes on a stone “anvil”; berries and fruit outside the breeding season.

Behaviour

Males sing loudly from treetops, repeating each phrase several times, and may mimic other birds and man-made sounds. It forages by hopping and pausing on lawns and in leaf litter and cracks snails on a favourite stone. It builds a neat cup nest in a bush or tree, lined with a smooth layer of mud and rotten wood.

Sources

Photo: Dion Art, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Певчий дрозд на пеньке (Turdus philomelos), Битцевский лес.jpg

Sound: Benoît Van Hecke, XC541754, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://xeno-canto.org/541754

Sound: Joost van Bruggen, XC434600, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://xeno-canto.org/434600

Sound: Sonothèque ADVL, XC732177, CC0 1.0 https://xeno-canto.org/732177

Text: Wikipedia (English) + FinBIF species descriptions, CC BY-SA 4.0; FinBIF: CC BY 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_thrush

See also