Thanks to volunteer Phil for his blog and photos.
On a beautiful sunny day that started with a chill in the air and then increasingly felt like Spring I returned to the Visitor Centre up the Zigzag Path accompanied by the sound of a song thrush loudly proclaiming its territory. However, the more I listened the more I had the feeling that something was not quite right. Somehow the typical repeated phrases of the song thrush were not being quite so clearly repeated as usual.
Feeling rather puzzled I looked for this bird and duly found it perched high in a tree as is usual for a song thrush. In the binoculars the reason for my confusion quickly became apparent as my presumed song thrush turned into a mistle thrush. I’m not especially well up on bird song, and while song thrush calls are quite easily recognisable, I’d never knowingly heard a mistle thrush singing before.
Mistle thrush by Phil Thornton
These birds are much less common than song thrushes but are seen quite regularly at Pulborough Brooks. Whereas the breeding population of the latter is estimated to be 1,200,000 males holding territories, the mistle thrush is estimated to have only 170,000. Both species occupy the same sort of habitat including woodland, parkland, farmland and gardens.
Both species have the typical streaked breast of the thrush family but, whereas the larger mistle thrush has a predominantly white background which can be seen in the photo above, the song thrush breast has some pale yellow in the background as seen in this photo.
Song thrush by Phil Thornton.
With Storm Eunice being very fresh in the memory, as soon as I identified the mistle thrush I immediately thought of an old name I’d come across for this species – “stormcock”. While most birds tend to take cover during bad weather, the mistle thrush seems to embrace it and will sing loudly in advance of and during stormy weather. Its song is thought to be audible more than a mile away and certainly Friday’s bird was singing loudly.
It would have been interesting to be at Pulborough Brooks before and during Storm Eunice to see if this and other mistle thrushes were singing, but having heeded all the safety advice and stayed at home, I will never know.
Here's the latest wildlife sightings board showing highlights for the last couple of days.