Japanese Thrush

How to identify

Field marks

1. Male has a black head, breast, back, wings and tail
2. White underparts with black spots on upper belly and flanks
3. Male has a yellow bill and thin yellow eye-ring

Male, female and young

Female has brown upperparts, a white throat, breast and belly, and rusty-orange flanks with black spots; first-winter male has deep blue-gray upperparts and throat.

Similar species

Grey-backed Thrush

Comparison concerns females: female Japanese Thrush is slightly smaller, with less extensive orange and more spots on the flanks—less orange, more spotting.

Where and when it's recorded

Busiest months: April and November–December · Most records: China, Japan, Vietnam

Japanese Thrush has been recorded at 381 of the 8,276 birding hotspots we track, in 6 countries and regions.

Records by month Northern Hemisphere

Where it's recorded most

1. Po ToiHong Kong (China)454 records
2. Yeliu IBATaiwan (China)413 records
3. Nanhui DongtanChina389 records

Countries and regions with the most records

ChinaJapanVietnamSouth KoreaThailandPhilippines

eBird records via GBIF up to 2024-12-31. A record means someone listed it; more records partly mean more birders, not more birds.

About

The Japanese thrush (Turdus cardis) is a species of bird in the thrush family Turdidae. The species is also known as the grey thrush or the Japanese grey thrush. The species was once split into two subspecies, with birds breeding in China being treated as the subspecies T. c. lateus,, but today differences are attributed to natural variation and the species is treated as being monotypic.

Excerpt from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 · authors · Read more on Wikipedia

Questions