Pied Thrush

About the Pied Thrush

The pied thrush (Geokichla wardii) is a member of the thrush family found in India and Sri Lanka. The males are conspicuously patterned in black and white while the females are olive brown and speckled. They breed in the central Himalayan forests and winter in the hill forests of southern India and Sri Lanka. Like many other thrushes, they forage on leaf litter below forest undergrowth and fly into trees when disturbed and sit still making them difficult to locate.

Males of this 22 cm (8.7 in) thrush are conspicuously black and white. Mostly black on the upper parts it has a long white supercilium, and white tips to the wing coverts, tertials, rump and tail. The underparts are white with black flank spots the bill and legs are yellow. Females and young birds have the same basic pattern, but the black is replaced by dark brown, and the white by light brown. The markings on the underside are scalier. The third primary is the longest followed by the fourth with the second and fifth being nearly equal in length. The first primary is reduced.

The bill is not as strongly curved as that of the dark-sided thrush or the long-billed thrush and the female lacks the prominent... Wikipedia →