Upland birds

Song thrush

Turdus philomelos

Group: Upland birds
Size class: Small (under 10 kg)
Family: Turdidae

Range

Europe

Habitat

Forest
Farmland

Range

Countries it is found in

82 countries

Åland Islands
Albania
Algeria
Andorra
Armenia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahrain
Belarus
Belgium
Bosnia & Herzegovina
Bulgaria
Croatia
Cyprus
Czechia
Denmark
Djibouti
Egypt
Eritrea
Estonia
Faroe Islands
Finland
France
Georgia

Range from:Wikipedia country bird lists, GBIF occurrence records — read 2026-08-05

Chapter 01

Overview

The song thrush (Turdus philomelos) breeds across most of Europe and east through Ukraine and Russia almost to Lake Baikal, reaching 75°N in Norway. It is partially migratory: birds from Scandinavia, eastern Europe and Russia winter around the Mediterranean, in North Africa and the Middle East, while many western birds stay. It was introduced to New Zealand and Australia in the 19th century, apparently for sentimental reasons. It is not globally threatened — Europe alone holds an estimated 40 to 71 million birds — but numbers have fallen by more than half in Britain and the Netherlands, most steeply on farmland, probably because of the loss of hedgerows, autumn sowing and pesticides.

Chapter 02

Identification

A smallish thrush, 20–23.5 cm long and 50–107 g, with plain brown upperparts and cream or buff underparts neatly spotted black, paler on the belly. The underwing is warm yellow-buff, the bill yellowish and the legs pink; the sexes are alike. The upperparts turn colder in tone from west to east across the range, from Sweden to Siberia. The redwing differs in its bold white eyebrow and red flanks and underwing; the mistle thrush is much larger, with white tail corners. The call is a short, sharp tsip. The male's song, given from treetops and rooftops, is a loud run of musical phrases each repeated two to four times, often with mimicry mixed in.

Chapter 03

Behaviour

The song thrush is not usually gregarious and, unlike the wandering fieldfare and redwing, tends to return to the same wintering area each year. It migrates mostly at night, in loose flocks crossing the sea on a broad front; return migration ranges from mid-February around the Mediterranean to May in northern Sweden. The female builds a neat, mud-lined cup nest in a bush or tree and lays four or five glossy blue eggs; two or three broods a year are normal. The bird is omnivorous, taking earthworms, snails, insects and berries, and it is known for using a favourite stone as an anvil to smash snail shells.

Chapter 04

Hunting

Thrushes have been caught for food for at least 12,000 years, and the hunting continues around the Mediterranean today, though it is not thought to be a significant cause of the song thrush's decline. Until at least the 19th century it was also kept as a cage bird for its song. In New Zealand, as an introduced species, it has no legal protection and can be killed at any time. In Sweden the taltrast has no open season in the hunting ordinance and is not among the species named for skyddsjakt on the hunter's own initiative in its bilaga 4.

Field data

Tracks

A photograph of real sign left by Song thrush. Prints vary with gait, ground and how long they have been there — treat this as one example, not a template.

Track photo:Natalya Ivanova CC BY

On the table