Song Thrush

A thrush about 20 to 23 cm long, a little smaller than a Blackbird. It is plain warm brown above and creamy white below, washed with buff across the breast, and covered in neat dark spots shaped like upside-down hearts.^{1, 2}

Look closely and the spots are fairly evenly spread from the breast down the belly and flanks. There is a dark stripe down each side of the throat, a faint dark patch on the cheek, and buff spots on the wing. In flight the underwing is warm yellowish-buff. The bill is dark with a paler base, and the legs are pinkish.³

Adults weigh about 75 g on average, according to BTO ringers' records of live birds, and most weigh 64 to 90 g.⁴

Males and females look the same. Males are a little bigger on average (77.7 g against 71 g in BTO's samples), but you cannot tell a pair apart by eye.

Young birds, out of the nest in spring and summer, look much like adults but are buffier on the head, with buff streaks on the back and shoulders.

The Mistle Thrush is the bird to check first. It is bigger, colder grey-brown and has no warm brown tones, with very heavy dark spots⁵; it shows white under the wing and white on the tail⁶, stands boldly upright and gives a loud rattling call.⁷ Side by side, with photos: Mistle Thrush or Song Thrush?

In winter, look out for the Redwing, a visitor from northern Europe about the same size, with a bright white stripe over the eye and rusty-red flanks and underwings; and the bigger Fieldfare, with a grey head and rump, chestnut back and black tail.

A female or young Blackbird can have a spotted or streaky breast, but it is bigger and deep brown all over, with its streaks and spots on a brown breast rather than a creamy one. A singing Blackbird does not repeat its phrases.

Most British Song Thrushes belong to the western European form clarkei. Birds of the Outer Hebrides and Skye are a separate form, hebridensis: darker brown above, with a greyish rump and larger spots below. Birds of the World places it on the west coast of mainland Scotland and in western Ireland too.⁸

The song gives the bird its name: loud, clear, whistled phrases, each usually sung two or three times, sometimes more, before the bird moves on to the next. The RSPB says this repetition sets it apart from a singing Blackbird.

Song Thrushes are often heard at first light and as dusk falls⁴, and often sing from the tops of trees. Song can start as early as January. It is most noticeable in late winter and spring.

The common call is a short "tsip" (the RSPB writes it "tsit"), often given as a bird flies up. Others include a high, thin "siih" when a hawk is overhead and an explosive chatter in high alarm in the breeding season.

Listen to British recordings, and see the repeats drawn as spectrograms: Song Thrush song and calls.

All year, across almost all of the UK. In the 2007-11 Bird Atlas Song Thrushes were recorded in 94% of the UK's 10-km squares in the breeding season and 91% in winter, missing then only from parts of the Scottish Highlands and Southern Uplands. Densities are higher in Ireland than in Britain.

They need trees or bushes to nest in and damp ground nearby to feed on: woods (above all broadleaved woods), scrub, parks, gardens, cemeteries and farmland with hedges. Look on short grass, along the edges of shrub beds and under bushes.

Listen for the repeated phrases early and late in the day, and look for broken snail shells scattered around a stone or the edge of a path: a sign that a Song Thrush has been using it as an anvil.

Some do. Song Thrushes are partial migrants: in Britain, about half the adults and two-thirds of the young birds move some way for the winter, while the rest stay put. Birds from northern Britain winter further south in Iberia than those from the south.

Ringing shows where some go: there have been over 1,000 reports abroad of Song Thrushes ringed in Britain and Ireland, most from France, Spain and Portugal; some of these birds were migrants from elsewhere, ringed here on passage. One young bird ringed on Fair Isle in October 1952 was found in Dorset, 981 km away, 15 months later.⁹

At the same time, birds from northern Europe arrive in late autumn; some spend the winter here and others go on south, as far as North Africa.

Earthworms, snails and insects, and in autumn and winter fruit and berries. In Britain, earthworms are the main food in early spring, snails take over in early summer, and berries matter from September to November.

Beetles and their larvae, caterpillars, flies and spiders are all eaten, and the fruit list is long: ivy, rowan, elder, bramble, yew, cherries, honeysuckle and cotoneaster among others. One study in suburban southern Britain found that, from December to March, earthworms made up as much as 94% of feeding records. Nestlings are fed softer food than the adults eat, such as caterpillars and grubs.

A Song Thrush breaks a snail's shell by beating it against a stone with a flick of the head. A favoured stone is called an anvil, and the broken shells around it give the bird away. Small snails, under about 1 cm, are swallowed whole.

The RSPB's advice for Song Thrushes in gardens is about habitat rather than feeders: leave some wild, untidy patches, which can give extra food and cover. In a radio-tracking study on farmland, bare soil in gardens was among the places they preferred to forage.¹⁰

In the UK the first eggs are laid between late March and late June, on average around 21 April, and a pair usually raises two or three broods a year, occasionally four.⁴

Built from moss, grass and twigs, the tidy cup sits in a bush, hedge, tree or creeper, often tucked against the trunk. What makes it easy to recognise is the inside: a smooth, hard lining of mud, clay, dung or rotten wood.

The eggs are glossy blue with blackish spots, usually 4 to a clutch (2 to 7). The female incubates them for about 14 days and the young leave the nest at about 14 days old. The parents go on feeding them for one to three weeks after that.

Song Thrushes feed on the ground close to cover, foraging more under bushes and trees, and less in the open, than many other thrushes. In the breeding season a pair holds a territory, as small as 0.2 hectares and usually 0.4 to 0.6 hectares in suburban gardens; a male sings louder and harder when a neighbour sings back.

In winter they may join mixed flocks of thrushes in fields and orchards where there is plenty of food.

A Song Thrush that survives to breed typically lives about 3 years. About 56% of adults survive from one year to the next, and 46% of young birds survive their first year.⁴

The oldest on the BTO's ringing list is a male ringed at Pittance Park near Edwinstowe, Nottinghamshire, in June 2001 and caught there by a ringer in June 2012, 11 years and 8 days later; it was ringed as a second-year bird, so it was older still.¹¹ The oldest on the European list, a bird ringed in Germany and later hunted (presumably shot), was aged 18 years 4 months.¹²

The Woodland Trust lists Sparrowhawks and domestic cats among its predators. Nests fail more often during incubation where crows and their relatives are common. Long frosts lower the survival of young birds, and long summer droughts that of adults.

The Song Thrush is on the UK Amber List and is of Least Concern worldwide. It moved from the Red List to Amber in 2021, when it was judged still close to the Red-list threshold.¹³ There are about 1.3 million territories in the UK (2016).

From the mid-1970s Song Thrush numbers fell steeply, and many gardens lost their resident pair.⁴ One study put the fall in lowland rural Britain at about 70% between 1970 and 1995, worst on intensive arable farms.

A review of the research highlights more young birds dying in their first year as a potential cause. Several lines of evidence suggest that drier soils in summer, partly from field drainage, harm breeding and survival by leaving fewer earthworms within reach; the loss of grassland has probably contributed, and the loss of hedgerows and scrub may have. The part played by predators is unclear.¹⁴

Numbers have been rising again. UK numbers were up 37% between 1995 and 2024, with rises in all four countries.¹⁵ Even so, there are 45% fewer Song Thrushes than in 1967 (BTO), and the RSPB says they are nowhere near as numerous as they once were.

Like all wild birds, Song Thrushes, their eggs and their nests while in use or being built are protected by law in Great Britain¹⁶ and Northern Ireland.¹⁷