Things you need to know about SONG THRUSHES!
Channel: A Shot Of Wildlife
Date: 2023-02-05

The song thrush is a medium sized relative of the blackbird with a wingspan of 34 cm and growing to weigh just over 80 grams. They are brown over their wings, backs and heads with cream coloured chests mottled with darker brown. When looked at careful these brown mottles are the shape of upturned arrowheads. Like most birds, they can turn up pretty much anywhere but their favoured habitats are Woodlands, farmlands, parks and gardens, they particularly rely on open areas for foraging and wooded areas for nesting. Song thrushes are omnivorous, eating worms, insects and other invertebrates throughout the spring and summer but turning to berries and fruits in the winter when these are in short supply. They are very good at extracting snails from their shells by repeatedly bashing them on a hard surface, often leaving a pile of empty shells in their favoured feeding spots. Song thrushes begin nesting in march when males claim territories and advertise for mates using a repetitive but varied call, which I will demonstrate later in this video. Once a pair has formed the female will create a cup shaped nest, usually among vegetation. This nest is quite distinct as its built with grass, twigs, moss and roots but then lined inside with a layer of mud. Once the nest is complete the female will lay between 3 and 5 bright blue eggs that measure 31mm in length. Only the female will incubate the eggs or brood the resulting chicks. They take between 13 to 15 days to hatch and once the chicks do hatch both parents will bring food to the nest to feed them. At just 14 days old the young are ready to fledge, and after this, the male usually takes full responsibility for feeding and teaching them whilst the female begins to prepare for the next nesting attempt. At around 5 weeks old the young birds will be self sufficient and will gradually disperse from their parents territory. Each year, song thrushes will produce 2 or 3 clutches of young, often using the same nest throughout the season and they’ll normally stop nesting around august time. They are only monogamous for one breeding season and will often pick a new mate every year. Song thrushes are present across the whole of the UK except for in mountainous areas and are also native across almost all of Europe apart from southern Greece and Italy. They were also introduced to Australia and New Zealand in the late 1800s and although they are still found across a lot of new Zealand, their distribution is now very limited in Australia. In some of their northern European range Song thrushes migrate towards the Mediterranean for the winter but in western Europe they are resident all year round. In the UK their numbers have declined by around 50% since the 1960s, but over the past 30 years this has stabilised and has shown signs of slowly increasing. There are currently around 1.3 million song thrush territories here. They have an average life expectancy of 3 to 4 years with the oldest known song thrush surviving to 13 years and 9 months of age. A song thrushes song is made up of a variety of short musical phrases repeated 2 to 4 times. 
Thanks to Birds Nests Nature for allowing me to use some of their nest footage, their channel can be found here:  @birdsnestsnature  
Thanks as always to Fred from WatchRWildlife, his British wildlife channel is here:  @WatchRWildlife  
#songthrush   #gardenbirds  #britishwildlife  

Some of the other footage and images used in this video were obtained using creative commons licences, the originals and their licence details can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REyiJTMTsXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX-FvYV6Dwg&t=278s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMPUFh87OLI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3-jgyy_G8c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbR-h85mP08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWwfl-YnLwU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJodKqa8htQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjfeHFEH0Xs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1A4W0Ajsbs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycFj0M1c2KE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osu-aJulCTs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeCgP3dFySE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kOeAj2Rku0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rk7Xfhm8Fw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojYQkO8ss1Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HogwE3jXls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z5PuUmd_Ww https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvJYYJg2w8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAznK1eUxjA https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_snail_shell_graveyard_around_a_Turdus_philomelos_anvil,_Chapeltoun,_Ayrshire.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Song_Thrush_Nest_14-04-12_%287077812519%29.jpg