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Okay, I meant to write an entertaining post. I honestly did. But I have been sick with different kinds and forms of cold since the beginning of December with no interruption, and so has my entire family. And I am sick of winter, too: first there was no winter at all, with scarcely a night below [...]

You may already know about this, but I was not aware that a pure white Blackbird (the thrush, not the icterid) can be found at Rufford Abbey Country Park in Nottinghamshire, UK. In fact, this leucistic lovely (check out the pic) has resided at the park for the last four years. Thanks to reader Sher Buckner [...]

It is not every day that a new species of bird is described, and this definitely does not tend to happen with birds that have been repeatedly collected and sit, as skins, in museums around the world.  But the Varzea Thrush Turdus sanchezorum, described in this paper in The Condor (link is a PDF), is one [...]

It was a dark and stormy night. Turdus “Blacky” Merula sat near the trunk of the small evergreen in the backyard that was his territory’s centre, hunkered down and head tucked in to shelter from the rain. He was an old male in his prime, and he had seen many things – but never had he [...]

Sitting on my folks’ deck on a summer evening, after the sun has already dropped below the Catskill Mountains the song trills from darkened hemlocks.  When sleeping with the window open the same song sneaks through the screen impossibly early, when dawn is still merely a thought and no sunlight has cleared the horizon.  At [...]

The national bird of Costa Rica is the Clay-colored Thrush, perhaps my favorite decision for a national bird of any country’s.  The Yigüirro, as it is called in Costa Rica, was declared Costa Rica’s national bird on 3 January 1977.  But why choose the Yigüirro at all in a country teeming with iconic and flashy [...]

The national bird of Sweden is the Blackbird Turdus merula, otherwise known as the Common Blackbird or Eurasian Blackbird, though, of course, in Sweden it is not known by any of those names but as Koltrast.*  The Blackbird became the Swedish national bird as a result of a newspaper poll in 1962.  Beyond the charisma [...]

The Orange-headed Thrush, Zoothera citrinus, is common across much of India and south-east Asia. It likes well wooded areas with a preference for shady gullies and damp areas. It is usually resident, but this individual, which was seen in Hong Kong, is a winter visitor there. Most migration is altitudinal with the birds reaching as [...]

Blackbird singing in the dead of night, Take these broken wings and learn to fly. All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise. Blackbird singing in the dead of night, Take these sunken eyes and learn to see. All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to be free. [...]

A hybrid thrush has been found on Stratton Mountain in Vermont.  The bird, which was determined through DNA analysis to be part Bicknell’s Thrush and part Veery, was found by researchers with the Vermont Center for Ecostudies who were studying Bicknell’s Thrush on the breeding grounds.  It was first noticed by a researcher who heard [...]

This past Monday I burned one of my many vacation days in order to extend my stay upstate long enough for me to hike up a mountain.  Like last year’s epic adventure up Wakely Mountain with Mike, Will and Patrick, this hike’s main goal was to track down a Bicknell’s Thrush, the seldom-seen bird that [...]

You’ve probably already read about our trip to see the Bicknell’s Thrush here, here and here but you might want to see some great pics of the hard-to-find bird, including a ringed one, here.

Bicknell’s Thrush is truly a birder’s bird. Not only is this bird’s picture next to the dictionary definition of the word “drab” but it looks exactly like another more, easily accessible species. The only way to reliably differentiate Bicknell’s from its close relative, Gray-cheeked Thrush, short of genetic testing, is to hear it sing. To [...]

Identity theft occurs with astonishing regularity in the avian world where all too often, species share so many overlapping traits as to appear virtually indistinguishable. Empidonax flycatchers are an excellent example of this phenomenon in North America, as are scaup. More esoteric, but no more simplistic, is the difference between Gray-cheeked and Bicknell’s Thrush. Bicknell’s [...]