Grey Thrush Turdus cardis
Nanning, China. November 2006

On a recent short trip to China I found the Grey Thrushes in the photos below tucked away in a sheltered herb-garden within the Nanning People’s Park (photo above). Like most Asian thrushes (and unlike many European species) they were extremely wary, and difficult to see well: there were probably about ten to twelve individuals in total though this may be an under-estimation as many sightings I had were nothing more than glimpses of small dark thrushes shooting up out of the undergrowth and hurtling away back into cover!

The Grey Thrush has (along with Izu Island and Brown-headed Thrushes) one of the most easterly distributions of any of the Palearctic’s thrushes, and most birders in the west have little or no experience of it. Confined to a realtively small area (at least for an almost entirely migratory species) it has an oddly discontinuous breeding range with a discrete population breeding in southern Japan and another breeding in central China: the two populations then winter together in southern China and Vietnam. The two populations are sometimes separated into the nominate Japanese-breeding form (the species is also known as Japanese Thrush - a name as helpful for identification as the utilitarian and underwhelming Grey) and the Chinese form lateus, but according to the generally excellent “Thrushes” by Clement and Hathaway (Helm, 2000) differences are minimal and the species is clinal in appearance. Assigning these birds to race is probably impossible therefore.

Interestingly the same book also states that Grey Thrushes have been recorded in Hong Kong mixing with Grey-backed Thrushes Turdus hortulorum - which was the case when I saw these birds in southern China (a couple of hundred miles to the west of HK).

 

 

 

Male Grey Thrushes.
Moult takes place pre-migration in this species, hence the pristine condition of these birds.

 

 

 

 

Female Grey Thrush.
Note the almost complete lack of orangey tones to the flanks (unlike Grey-backed Thrush) and the lack of a supercilium.

 

 

 

1st winter Grey Thrush

All photos copyright Charlie Moores