Nature Notes - Song Thrush

Out for a stroll a few weeks back, I came across a table bearing slices of cake, neatly wrapped and priced, with an honesty box for hungry walkers. I decided I fitted that category, so I stopped, paid my money, and enjoyed a very good and generously cut slice of home-made sponge. While I stopped to eat, the peace was disturbed by an insistent tapping sound.

A little bit of quiet delving revealed the origin. A song thrush was working at his anvil. “Anvil” is the name often given to stones selected by song thrushes to bash snails against, so that the shells are broken and the bird can eat the contents. I’m not sure whether it quite counts as “using a tool”, which is something some birds do, in the crow family especially, but a thrush will often have its favourite anvil stone, and if you find one it may well be surrounded by lots of bits of broken shell.

A large pebble I brought home from a childhood holiday and placed in my own little garden plot (I and my brothers each had one) was, to my delight, taken over by a local song thrush. Finding the one on my walk took me right back to those days.

Song thrushes were commoner then, though they never were as common as their relative the blackbird. Today there would be about five million breeding pairs of blackbirds in the UK, and maybe a little over one million pairs of song thrushes. A decline of more than 50% in the numbers of song thrushes in little more than 25 years has caused some concern, but more recently there has been a slight recovery.

Song thrushes are a little bit smaller than a blackbird. They are birds of mostly larger gardens, parks, woodlands and well-grown hedgerows. Song thrushes like plenty of trees around and are seldom very far from cover. The sexes are alike, and they have a distinctive speckled front, plain brown back and wings, and orange on the underwing, though this is only briefly visible in flight.

Though famous for its song, usually delivered from a prominent position perhaps near the top of a small tree or bush, for me the song isn’t as inventive or attractive as that of the blackbird. It consists of short phrases which are repeated several times. Like most songbirds, it sings through the spring into early summer, but it will sing a bit in the autumn and through the winter too, though not as much as its larger relative the mistle thrush. It will sing quite late into the evening.

As well as snails, song thrushes eat worms and many kinds of insect, as well as berries and other fruits. They nest in trees and shrubs, well concealed, where three to five chicks are raised. They are semi-migratory, and the song thrush you see in the winter might not be the same as your summer resident. They remain one of my personal favourites!