Garden bird - possibly juvenile blackbird or a thrush?

Hi,

I have seen a couple of other threads asking the same question, and they included photos, but the photos don’t quite match the bird I’m seeing.

The birds in our garden have dark upper plumage and a speckled belly. The photos I have seen of juvenile blackbirds show speckled plumage on the belly, but the pale plumage looks more like a pale brown or cream and the pale plumage on our birds is a much brighter white colour. The photos of thrushes I’ve seen all have the right kind of colour on the belly plumage, but the dark plumage elsewhere is too pale to match the birds I’ve been seeing, my birds have upper plumage which is closer to black than brown. it’s hard for me to give you a very accurate idea of size without seeing these birds immediately next to another bird, but they are considerably larger than a sparrow, smaller than a collared dove. I know, that’s delightfully vague and doesn’t really narrow it down at all, sorry! 

I feel like it’s more probable that we have juvenile blackbirds, so perhaps someone can confirm that the juvenile blackbird speckled plumage (bearing mind October) can be very pale, closer to whide than cream. It’s very high contrast. It looks more like the photos I have seen of dark sided thrushes, but my understanding is that they aren’t found in the UK.

I wish I could get a photo, but they flock around the bird table and then scatter with their treasure before I have a chance to pick up my phone and photograph them through the window.