The Amami thrush (''Zoothera major'') is a member of the thrush family Turdidae. It is endemic to the islands of

Amami Ōshima , also known as Amami, is the largest island in the Amami archipelago between Kyūshū and Okinawa. It is one of the Satsunan Islands. The island, 712.35 km2 in area, has a population of approximately 73,000 people. Administratively it is d ...

and Kakeroma island in the northern

Nansei Islands The , also known as the or the , are a chain of Japanese islands that stretch southwest from Kyushu to Taiwan: the Ōsumi, Tokara, Amami, Okinawa, and Sakishima Islands (further divided into the Miyako and Yaeyama Islands), with Yonagun ...

of Japan.

Description

This large, heavily patterned thrush is similar in appearance to the

scaly thrush The scaly thrush (''Zoothera dauma'') is a member of the thrush family Turdidae. Distribution and habitat It breeds in wet coniferous taiga, mainly in the Himalayas through Malaysia. Description The sexes are similar, 27–31 cm long, wi ...

, to which was considered a subspecies. It has warm olive-brown to buff upperparts and whitish underparts with heavy black scaling. It has twelve tail

feather Feathers are epidermal growths that form a distinctive outer covering, or plumage, on both avian (bird) and some non-avian dinosaurs and other archosaurs. They are the most complex integumentary structures found in vertebrates and a premier ...

s. The scaly thrush is smaller and has fourteen tail feathers. It has a cheerful song similar to the

Siberian thrush The Siberian thrush (''Geokichla sibirica'') is a member of the thrush family, Turdidae. The genus name ''Geokichla'' comes from Ancient Greek ''geo-'', "ground-" and ''kikhle'', " thrush". The specific ''sibirica'' is Latin for Siberia. It bree ...

. The Amami thrush ranges in length from and weighs approximately . Among standard measurements, the wing chord is , the

bill Bill(s) may refer to: Common meanings * Banknote, paper cash (especially in the United States) * Bill (law), a proposed law put before a legislature * Invoice, commercial document issued by a seller to a buyer * Bill, a bird or animal's beak Plac ...

is and the tarsus is .Peter Clement (2001) ''Thrushes''. Princeton University Press.

Behaviour and ecology

Its breeding

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

is mature subtropical broadleaved

evergreen In botany, an evergreen is a plant which has foliage that remains green and functional through more than one growing season. This also pertains to plants that retain their foliage only in warm climates, and contrasts with deciduous plants, which ...

forest around humid valleys. Its diet includes

invertebrate Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

s and

fruit In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants (also known as angiosperms) disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in particu ...

. It breeds in May and June, laying 3-4

egg An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the a ...

Status

The breeding population is estimated by Amami Ornithologists' Club (NPO, Japan) all over the island every late March since 1999.

References

External links

BirdLife Species Factsheet
Birds described in 1905 Birds of the Ryukyu Islands Endemic birds of Japan Zoothera {{Turdidae-stub