Dark-throated Thrush Turdus ruficollis atrogularis
Swansea, Wales. 04 March 2006

I’m a huge fan of thrushes - I can’t really explain why, but perhaps it’s because they’re such creatures of contrast: subtle tones but often beautifully patterned, a reassuringly solid build but ghost-like in a forest, expert songsters but often silent, superb migrants that cover vast distances but then spend weeks hanging around in a single tree defending an ever-dwindling supply of berries…
And so many of the very best looking ones are so very hard to get to - for example wonderful East Asian taxa like Siberian or Eye-browed Thrushes that live in distant parts of the world that even airline crew don’t get to more than once in a blue moon…

This is certainly true of the “Black-throated Thrush” (a valid species, or - along with “Red-throated Thrush” - half of one, the Dark-throated Thrush). The last one I saw - when it was still a species called Black-throated Thrush - was skulking under a bush in a park in Kuwait one winter when I was - well, blimey, not quite a small boy but quite a long time ago I can tell you. They breed in the Siberian taiga west to the slopes of the Urals, and have only appeared in the UK about sixty times - which may well sound a lot, but many have been short-stay birds on islands so far north of the mainland that they’re practically in the Arctic and when half the others have been here I’ve been abroad somewhere (looking for Dark-throated Thrushes possibly)…

Anyway, full species/half a species/race/sub-species or whatever, I finally got to see a feather-perfect male today - a full nine weeks after it turned up! Yes, call me “rocket-man”, an “ace twitcher” - whatever, but once I decide to see something I just get my gear ready and nine weeks later I go and see it…and today I figured it was finally time to get moving and make the drive 100 miles west to the Welsh city of Swansea to see the over-wintering atrogularis Dark-throated Thrush that had first been seen on a berry bush in a small garden on the 28th December 2005.

Was it worth it? Of course. The sun was out, there were only a few of us there, and the bird looked absolutely pristine. I perhaps could have done without the local home-owners telling long stories about how some bloke from Yorkshire lay on their lawn taking photos of the bird from five feet away - but what the heck, perhaps if I’d turned up nine weeks ago when the excitement of its discovery was still tangible and the milk of human kindness was being shared out in its glow I’d have been invited in out of the cold too…maybe next time I should be a bit quicker eh…

Male Dark-throated Thrush Turdus ruficollis atrogularis

All photographs copyright Charlie Moores 2006.