The pale thrush (''Turdus pallidus'') is a passerine bird of the eastern

Palearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. The realm consists of several bioregions: the Euro-Sibe ...

belonging to the genus '' Turdus'' in the

thrush ''The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'' is an American spy fiction television series produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Television and first broadcast on NBC. The series follows secret agents, played by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, who work for a secret ...

family Turdidae. It is closely related to the eye-browed thrush and

grey-backed thrush The grey-backed thrush (''Turdus hortulorum'') is a species of bird in the family Turdidae. It breeds in northeastern China and the Russian Far East and winters in southern China and northern Vietnam. Its natural habitat is temperate forest ...

Taxonomy

The pale thrush was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist

Johann Friedrich Gmelin , fields = , workplaces = University of GöttingenUniversity of Tübingen , alma_mater = University of Tübingen , doctoral_advisor = Philipp Friedrich GmelinFerdinand Christoph Oetinger , academic_advisors = , doctora ...

in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's ''

Systema Naturae ' (originally in Latin written ' with the ligature æ) is one of the major works of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and introduced the Linnaean taxonomy. Although the system, now known as binomial nomen ...

''. He placed it with the thrushes in the genus '' Turdus'' and coined the

binomial name In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''Turdus pallidus''. The scientific name comes from Latin ''Turdus'' meaning "thrush" and ''pallidus'' meaning "pallid" or "pale". Gmelin based his account on the "Pale thrush" that had been described in 1783 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his multi-volume work ''A General Synopsis of Birds''. The species is monotypic: no

subspecies In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species ...

are recognised.

Discription

It is 23 cm long. The feet are pale pinkish-brown and 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 grey above and yellow below. The male is brown above with a blue-grey head and throat. The underparts are pale brown, darker on the flanks and whitish on the belly and undertail-coverts. The

flight feather Flight feathers (''Pennae volatus'') are the long, stiff, asymmetrically shaped, but symmetrically paired pennaceous feathers on the wings or tail of a bird; those on the wings are called remiges (), singular remex (), while those on the tail ...

s of the wing are dark grey and the underwing-coverts are grey or white. The tail is dark grey with white tips to the outer feathers. The female is similar to the male but duller with a browner head and pale throat. It has harsh ''chuck-chuck'' and ''see-ip'' calls and a bubbling alarm call.

Distribution and habitat

It breeds in south-east Siberia, north-east

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

and Korea and may breed in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, especially on Tsushima Island. It is largely migratory, wintering in southern and central Japan, South Korea and southern China, occasionally reaching as far as Yunnan, Taiwan and the Philippines. It inhabits forests, scrub, gardens and parks. It is a shy bird which keeps to cover. It can occur in large flocks on migration, particularly where there are berries.

References

*Brazil, Mark A. (1991) ''The Birds of Japan''. Christopher Helm, London. *Lee, Woo-Shin, Koo, Tae-Hoe & Park, Jin-Young (2000) ''A Field Guide to the Birds of Korea''. LG Evergreen Foundation, Seoul. *MacKinnon, John & Phillipps, Karen (2000) ''A Field Guide to the Birds of China''. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

External links

Oriental Bird Images: Pale Thrush
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1589031 pale thrush Thrushes Birds of Manchuria Birds of Korea Fauna of Siberia pale thrush pale thrush