Wood Thrush

Overview

Wood Thrush: Medium thrush, rust-brown upperparts, white underparts with heavy dark brown spots. Eye-rings are white. Black bill has creamy pink base on lower mandible. In the early 1900s, its range began to expand north, forcing the Veery and Hermit thrushes to find another habitat.

Range and Habitat

Wood Thrush: Breeds from Manitoba, Ontario, and Nova Scotia south to Florida and Gulf of Mexico. Spends winters in tropics. Found in moist, deciduous woodlands with a thick understory; also well-planted parks and gardens.

INTERESTING FACTS

The Wood Thrush was first described by German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in 1789. It is best known for its hauntingly beautiful song.
It is the official bird of the District of Columbia.
The genus name is a direct translation of its common name, derived from the Greek words for woodland and thrush or fieldfare. The species name comes from the Latin mustela, or weasel.
A group of thrushes are collectively known as a "hermitage" and a "mutation" of thrushes.

The Wood Thrush has a tremendous range reaching up to generally 3.5 million square kilometers. This bird can be found in Central and North America including Belize, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and the United States. This bird appears in temperate, tropical and subtropical forests as well as plantations. The global population of this bird is estimated to be around 14 million individual birds. It is not believed that the population trends for this species will soon approach the minimum levels that could suggest a potential decline in population. Due to this, population trends for the Wood Thrush have a present evaluation level of Least Concern.