It is not by chance that the song thrush got its name. His song has attracted people for a long time. Many bird lovers place the song of the song thrush next to the songs of the nightingale and black-headed warbler.
The range of the song thrush characterizes it as a bird of European forests. Moreover, of its three subspecies, two inhabit Ireland and England, and the rest of the range in Europe, Asia Minor and Siberia is occupied by one Eastern European subspecies. The history of this thrush is very similar to the stories of the white-browed and fieldfare. Two Irish-English subspecies characterize it as a "northern" bird. This is also evidenced by the colonization of the northern regions of Scandinavia by the song thrush, its penetration into the European tundra and settlement from Europe to Siberia. The song thrush is not found in southern Spain. It is not found in southern Italy, Greece and Asia Minor. Nor does it live on the islands of the Mediterranean Sea, which are usually inhabited by all ancient tertiary species, often forming special subspecies here. All this would seem to indicate the relative youth of the song thrush and its north-or, more precisely, north-western European origin. This hypothesis is also confirmed by the close connection of the song thrush when nesting with spruce, more precisely with low spruce undergrowth, as well as with juniper. The youth of the species is also evidenced by the fact that it has not yet spread to the southern regions of many Mediterranean countries, where there are the most favorable conditions for it. There is no song thrush on the Atlantic islands (Azores, Canaries, Madeira and Cape Verde), which also indicates its Northern European origin and the relative youth of European populations of this species. It should be emphasized that in post-glacial times, the song thrush was more attracted to the taiga forests of Europe and Siberia than to the luxurious forests of Sardinia, Corsica and Cyprus. There is one weak point in the above hypothesis. This is the Caucasian-Asia Minor part of the range, according to modern ideas, inhabited by the European (eastern) subspecies. After all, Northern Iran and the Caucasus for many blackbirds and other bird species are often refuges of ancient pre-glacial populations. Already, underestimation of the historical role of these areas in the evolution of birds in Europe has repeatedly become the cause of unintentional mistakes.
In most of its range, the song thrush is a migratory bird; in Western and Southern Europe it is a wintering bird (it may also be sedentary). Most researchers note the diversity of nesting sites for the song thrush, considering it an inhabitant of mixed European forests. However, some scientists directly indicate that the song thrush prefers spruce forests. In this regard, the absence of the song thrush in the spruce forests of the Tien Shan is another confirmation of the youth of the species. The song thrush's affinity for spruce forests is especially striking in the north. In the belt of coniferous-deciduous and broad-leaved forests, it nests in oak forests, maple forests, pine forests, birch forests, in alder-birch forests with spruce undergrowth. Until recently, the song thrush clearly preferred areas poorly developed by humans, although it gravitated towards the edges and outskirts of large forests. Now it has begun to nest in gardens and parks, especially if they have at least single spruce trees. In the north, it nests on the plains and in the mountains, rising on the Kola Peninsula to the zone of crooked birch forests, in the Urals - to subalpine birch forests with an admixture of spruce and fir. In the Caucasus, according to many researchers, it does not nest on the plains, but lives like a real mountain bird.
In the Moscow region, song thrushes appear at the end of the first ten days of April. Birds fly at night and their passage can be identified by a distinct and sharp “tinkling” sound. They fly alone or in small scattered groups. Males often begin to sing 1-2 days after appearing at the nesting site. However, many birds also sing while migrating, stopping briefly in different places. Cases when a song thrush, having sung for several days in one area, suddenly disappears, happen quite often.
The song thrush nests in separate pairs and never forms colonies, although in the most favorable places it settles quite densely and becomes numerous. In most cases, the minimum distance at which nesting males sing ranges from 150 to 200-300 m. Among true thrushes, the songbird is the most “unsociable” bird. The best singers (apparently old males) are especially intolerant of close proximity. Arriving usually first, they occupy rather remote areas of the forest, although they avoid the depths of closed massifs. Dissatisfaction when other singing males of their own species appear nearby is clearly manifested in song. The song becomes creaky and hasty. Meeting on one tree or sitting on neighboring ones, the males begin to sing so creakingly and are so choked with rage that this creaky song can rightfully be called a special song of threat. Old bird lovers claimed that the best singers (“the most thoughtful, elegant and strong males”) perch alone in deep forests. By deep forests, amateurs understood areas remote from human habitation, but necessarily dissected by small forests, swamps, clearings or burnt areas, where song thrushes sometimes nest in “countless” numbers along the edges. Having chosen such a corner somewhere away from the settlement, a lonely old blackbird “can set the rhythm” for the entire huge singing forest. In the best places on the outskirts of tall forests, among grassy swamps overgrown with bushes, G.N. Simkin was able to hear up to 100 birds on his morning excursion. Even when nesting at a distance of 150-200 m from each other, song thrushes “pack” their settlements so tightly, numbering 100 or more birds in a “circle”, that there can be no doubt about the organized hierarchical structure of such settlements. But this is apparently how predominantly young birds or special races of song thrushes prefer to live.
The song of the song thrush belongs to the class of endless ones. It has neither a definite end nor a definite beginning. The song begins with different, new sounds each time, although there are birds that have their favorite “initiations”. The song thrush can sing continuously and for a very long time. Sometimes, by slightly increasing the time for “silence” in each “method”, he does not let the listener understand that he is singing in uniform “words” or “cries”, building a song from separate clear knees, separated by precise silences. It seems that all the sounds and sounds of the repertoire of each bird in the usual “working” or “unaddressed” version obey the law of random or free selection. It is only occasionally possible to hear sessions of concerted singing between song thrushes living within earshot of each other's song. Sometimes, when a bird appears next to a singing thrush, the sound signals of which are included in its repertoire, in response to the calls and songs of this bird, the song thrush, like other imitators, increases the frequency of reproduction of the same or similar sounds. The number of different sounds and clearly distinguishable sounds in the repertoire of each blackbird is very large. In the best singers (usually old and experienced males) it reaches several hundred. Thus, the most characteristic features of the song of this thrush should be recognized as its three main features: infinity, singing with clearly defined knees and words, and, finally, the usual repetition of the most characteristic sounds (2-3 times, and sometimes more). The latter feature makes it easy to distinguish the song thrush from similar singing species (black and white thrush). The individual variability of song in the song thrush is incredibly high. Long-term recordings of songs of birds from different areas, including birds nesting in the neighborhood, do not yet allow us to conclude that individual tribes and types of sound structures in this species are inherited. This situation may seem paradoxical: according to research by some authors (for example, I.R. Boehme), unlike many other birds (including thrushes), song thrushes are raised, even taken from nests on the first day of life and raised in isolation from sounds and songs of other birds, they can still sing on their own. Although the songs of such males are much more primitive and poorer than those of young males raised in the wild, they are still quite close to the usual songs of this species. Consequently, many elements of a song are of a hereditary, genetic nature. But if in other species of birds this hereditary element is quite easily identified during a mass study of birds nesting in the same geographical area or next to each other, then in the song thrush, even with a good knowledge of the laws of the structure of its song and the many sounds characteristic of it, it has not yet It is possible to speak with sufficient confidence about such elements (sounds, sounds and phrases) - so great is the variability of the songs of different individuals and so great is the vocal repertoire of each bird.
Song thrushes are excellent imitators. It is difficult to list all the species of birds whose signals and song fragments are found in the songs of these blackbirds. Most often they imitate the sounds of nuthatches, woodpeckers, daytime birds of prey, nightingales, warblers, warblers, chaffinches, tits, waders, i.e. birds that have pure tonal (whistle) signals in their repertoire. However, these thrushes apparently transpose and transform (change) many borrowed sounds in their own way. Many of these sounds are very difficult to recognize. One of the best blackbirds studied by G.N. Simkin, "shouted" by the lapwing, herbal, snail, blackling, fifi, crake, carrier, many cracks and whistles of other thrushes, many calls of the nuthatch, great spotted woodpecker, yellow, robin, cuckoo's flight and many calls from the songs of the nightingale, jackdaw, pipit , great tit and many sounds of other forest, meadow and swamp birds. From afar, another, younger, less experienced, but also extraordinary singer responded to him. And yet, despite the enormous individual variability of song, among song thrushes there are often birds in whose repertoires one can hear the same techniques, sounds, and individual sounds.
The usual sound vocabulary of song thrushes is very poor. It is significantly poorer than the dictionaries of many other (and primarily colonial) thrushes - fieldfare and white-browed. Its vocabulary does not include the variety of alarm signals that characterize the calling systems of social blackbirds. The general silence of song thrushes is also striking. Even in great danger, the song thrush disappears into the forest with a low, high-pitched “tion” whistle, close to the “hawk” call of many other birds. Such a signal in the forest can only warn the female or chicks, and only at a short distance. This signal belongs to the group of "masked alarm" signals.
Females appear in the areas of singing males usually 8-10 days after the first birds arrive. When meeting them, the males ruffle their feathers, lower their wings, and jump around them on the branches. A pair is formed only if the female is included in the ritual and responds to the male with a similar dance. After the formation of a pair, mating games continue and are repeated many times. At the same time, the male seems to be chasing the female in a tree or on the ground, comically jumping to the right and then to the left. The ritual ends when the female takes an inviting pose, followed by mating.
Nest construction in the Moscow region most often begins 15-20 days after the appearance of the first males. The female chooses the place for the nest (usually near the edge or a cleared space). In central Russia, most nests are located on fir trees (more than 70%), on juniper, pine trees, deciduous trees, occasionally in piles of brushwood, on stumps, and sometimes on the ground. Nests are especially often built on small fir trees in years with a cold spring, when the blossoming of leaves is delayed for a long time. On the contrary, in warm springs, when the forest turns green and closes already in early May, thrushes build nests on deciduous trees much more often. Typically, nests are located at a height of 1 to 3 m, sometimes very high in trees (up to 20 m). The song thrush builds different nests on different types of bushes and trees, and often very carefully selects rather rare material (for example, green moss in a deciduous forest). Very often, thin spruce twigs, dry grass stems, roots, green mosses, lichens, earth, clay and wood dust are used to build a nest. According to the observations of V.M. Modestov, the female first lays down the nesting material in a loose, sloppy pile, and then crushes it, rotating in the nest first in one direction or the other. After the shape of the nest is outlined, the male also takes part in its completion. Having finished building the walls of the nest, the birds smear the tray with wet earth or clay. Clay is collected from the nearest swamp, puddle or spring. The main inner layer is made of wood dust mixed with clay. In this case, the nest and the ground are abundantly moistened with water brought by the birds in their mouths. A durable, subsequently dry, smooth and windproof tray often resembles the perfect half of a papier-mâché ball. This amazing and perfect “cardboard” hemisphere in song thrush nests sharply distinguishes them from the nests of other birds. Many researchers believe that the tray is formed with the help of saliva. However, it has been noted that fresh “plaster” is so wet and damp that it is completely inconsistent with the development of the salivary glands in these birds. Blackbirds usually build a nest in 3-5 days. Late nests are sometimes built in 2-3 days. “Plastering” the nest takes 1-2 days.
A clutch of 4-6 (usually 5) blue eggs with black spots in April - June is incubated only by the female. Incubation lasts 13-14 days. In warm years, incubation begins with the last egg, in cold years - sometimes even with the first. At first, the female often leaves the clutch. Subsequently, she flies from the nest almost every hour for only 2-7 minutes, and upon her return she turns over the eggs. At this time, the male does not feed her or replace her at the nest, but is always nearby, guarding the nest and the female, singing from dawn to dusk. However, his song at this time becomes less varied and less sonorous. Both parents feed the chicks for 14 days. Song thrushes arrive with food much less frequently than other birds, but at the same time they bring significantly more food. When feeding chicks with earthworms, the female brings 1-2 worms, the male 5-6 at a time. By the end of their nesting life, the chicks receive 460-600 earthworms per day. The maximum number of feed deliveries per day is 140-150 (from 1 to 7 deliveries per hour). The male usually places the worms on the edge of the nest and pushes them one by one deep down the throat of each chick. In bad weather, it is the female who warms the chicks. The male only occasionally sits on them for 1-2 minutes. Often when it rains, either the male or the female sits on the chicks and, opening their wings, protects them from the rain. In the first days of the chicks’ life, the female warms them a lot and then the male feeds her too. The mass emergence of chicks in the middle zone is observed from late May to mid-June. The chicks get out of the nests, not yet able to fly, and for the first days they stay on the nesting tree. Adult birds feed them for 7-8 days. If adult birds do not start the second clutch, then after the chicks rise to the wing, they, along with their broods, gradually move to berry patches and forest edges bordering meadows, clearings or fields. Here they stay until departure.
The song thrush is a very cautious bird. At the first danger, caught on the ground or in the lower tiers of the forest, the thrush tries to escape unnoticed or quietly glide into the thicket. Sometimes it emits a warning signal “ko”, similar to the similar signal of the white-browed thrush. It often skillfully hides in trees and sits motionless. It does not have the demonstrative alarm calls characteristic of many other blackbirds, nor does it exhibit conspicuous display behavior during alarm. It is only very rarely possible to see song thrushes attack animals and humans while protecting chicks. At the same time, blackbirds sometimes click their beaks threateningly and emit a special signal “tish-tish-tsk...”. This thrush does not have many of the danger warning and contact signals that are so characteristic of schooling blackbirds. The song thrush usually does not protect its nests, preferring to camouflage them well and leave unnoticed when danger appears. Very often, disturbed birds abandon their nests, even with heavily hatched eggs. As a result, about 70% of their clutches and nesting chicks die annually.
The song thrush most often collects food on the ground. In the forest, like other thrushes, it willingly stirs up leaves and digs out the top loose layer of litter. In this regard, the main share of food consists of earthworms, slugs and other mollusks, spiders, and centipedes. It catches a lot of beetles: click beetles, ground beetles, beetles, dung beetles, rove beetles, weevils and leaf beetles. Willingly collects long-legged mosquitoes, caterpillars and butterflies themselves. Actively switches to feeding on berries as they ripen. It often brings berries to chicks. Willingly eats strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, bird cherry, serviceberry, stone fruit, black currant, forest honeysuckle, red elderberry, and rowan. A significant proportion of the diet can consist of seeds (spruce, birch, sedge and other plants), as well as leaves of marianberry, crowberry, in the north - dwarf birch, etc. And yet the main food of this species, like most other thrushes, is earthworms and mollusks, which the song thrush collects especially carefully, often flying after them into grassy meadows, clearings, clearings and the banks of reservoirs.
Autumn migrations begin in mid-August and continue until mid-October. In the northern regions, it is extremely rare to see single song thrushes on wintering grounds. During migration, they often fly in flocks of white-browed birds. They often fly at night, signaling their presence with a twittering signal. They winter in England, France, Ireland, Southern Europe and North Africa.
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The song thrush (lat. Turdus philomelos) is distributed throughout the Eurasian continent, and in the mid-19th century it was introduced to South-Eastern Australia and New Zealand. He is the most memorable representative of the Thrush family (Turdidae) from the order Passeriformes. Its rhythmic loud trill includes a variety of whistle melodies that sound in random order and are repeated several times without stopping.
The bird performs its solo sitting in the crown of a tree or on a tall bush. In the Middle Ages, song thrushes were valued not only for their melodious singing, but were also considered a delicacy of medieval French cuisine.
The feathered soloist owes his vocal skills to the special structure of the vocal muscles and lower larynx. Its cavity contains elastic membranes. Sound is produced during exhalation when the passing air flow causes the membranes to vibrate. The vocal muscles force the right and left sides of the larynx to move in a random order. The vocalist is significantly superior to his brother in his skill.
Behavior
The song thrush chooses to live in wooded areas, rural gardens or areas of small vegetation in the middle of plowed fields. It especially likes to nest among young spruce shoots or in juniper bushes. Birds have only recently begun to appear in the city. Sometimes they can be seen in large park complexes where spruce trees grow. They winter in southern and western Europe, North Africa and the Mediterranean coast.
Blackbirds search for food mainly on the ground and only occasionally on the branches of bushes. The composition of their menu depends on the current season. In early spring, earthworms predominate in the diet. In early summer, the thrush switches to caterpillars, spiders and various insects. Birds wintering on the Mediterranean coasts feed on marine mollusks and small crustaceans, which remain in abundance on the shore after low tide. Throughout the year, they consume snails, breaking their shells on rocks or simply throwing them onto rocks from a great height.
At the beginning of October, birds gather in large flocks and go to warm countries for the winter. Their seasonal migrations are almost invisible, although during the flight song thrushes periodically call each other to maintain contact with their relatives.
The flock flies out at dusk. As soon as the first rays of the rising sun appear, the birds immediately descend and hide in the nearest bushes and trees from their enemies. The best conditions for flying occur when the wind is fair and the sky is not overcast. A sharp deterioration in the weather forces blackbirds to interrupt their flight, as some of the juveniles find it difficult to tolerate difficult weather conditions and die from exhaustion. If strong gusts of wind disrupt the route of a migratory flock, the birds can correct it in time. In extreme cases, they are capable of flying in bad weather.
Reproduction
In early spring, song thrushes return to their nesting sites and break up into pairs. Typically, females arrive one week later than males. Having chosen a mate, the male performs a mating dance in front of her. Having fluffed his feathers and lowered his wings, he briskly gallops around his lady. If the female is satisfied with such a gentleman, she starts dancing with him and then a couple is created.
After a week, the female begins to search for a suitable place to build a nest. Birds usually choose coniferous trees or juniper thickets. First, they weave a base from twigs in the form of a deep bowl, and then the insides are plastered with a mixture of clay and wood dust.
At the end of April, the female lays a clutch of 6 blue eggs with dark speckles. She is exclusively responsible for incubating the chicks, and after 2 weeks small and completely helpless chicks are born. They require constant parental care. Already on the 16th day, they acquire feathers and begin to master vital skills. The chicks learn to fly and search for food on their own. Having hatched the first brood, the parents begin laying a new clutch. Under favorable weather conditions, one pair can raise up to 3 broods per season.
Description
The body length reaches 23 cm, the wingspan is up to 36 cm. On the head there is a pattern of light feathers on a brownish background. On the pointed beak, the lower part is light and the upper part is dark. The back is brown, the belly is light, a yellowish tint is visible on the chest and sides. The plumage on the chest is decorated with dark-brown triangular specks.
The long light brown legs end in toes, three of which point forward and one points backward. All fingers have sharp claws.
The lifespan of a song thrush in the wild does not exceed 17 years. In captivity, with good care, many individuals live up to 19 years.
Blackbirds are small passerine birds, widespread in Eurasia and America. Blackbirds are not afraid of frost, so they fly to nesting sites very early, fly away later than other bird species, and when there is an abundance of food, they remain to spend the winter in temperate latitudes. These are songbirds, and blackbirds and songbirds are considered unsurpassed singers.
Birds nest in separate pairs or colonies; depending on the weather, they can lay 2 clutches. There are from 3 to 7 chicks in a brood. Blackbirds feed on various insects, spiders and worms; during the harvest period they will not refuse fruits and berries. They move along the ground by walking or jumping, with their tail held high.
In the photo, the blackbirds look very different: the genus of true blackbirds is part of the thrush family and forms 62 species of birds with a wide variety of plumage colors.
A bird known for its measured, melodic singing, where low trills and ringing whistles are interspersed with onomatopoeia of other birds.
The size of the song thrush is from 21 to 25 cm with a weight of 55 - 100 g. The back, tail and crown of the birds are colored chocolate brown with a gray coating. The white belly and yellowish chest are strewn with well-defined brown streaks. Males and females of the species look the same.
The song thrush is widespread in most European countries, Asia Minor and Siberia. Birds settle in a wide variety of biotopes, but prefer forests and forest-steppes with a predominance of spruce, fir and juniper.
The blackbird's main diet consists of insects; in the fall, fruits and berries appear in the diet.
Males are the first to arrive at nesting sites. The pair is formed after a mating ritual, when the male with ruffled feathers jumps around the female, and she responds to him with a similar dance. The nest is built on small fir trees, at a height of up to 3 m above the ground and is a neat bowl of dry grass and moss, firmly molded with earth. Unlike other species, song thrushes carefully “plaster” the inside of their nests with clay and dust, generously lubricated with saliva, and do not line the tray with litter. Their eggs are bright blue with sparse speckles. There are from 3 to 6 eggs in a nest, some pairs bring offspring 2 times per season.
The song thrush is much easier to hear by its characteristic voice than to see. 
Song thrush in autumn bushes. 
A song thrush sings on a tree branch. 
Deryaba
This is a large thrush, up to 27 cm long and weighing about 140 g. In appearance, the mistletoe is similar to the same motley song thrush. The back of the birds is gray-brown, the belly is white with bright brown streaks, and the underwings are also white. Females and males are colored the same.
Deryabys build nests high above the ground, in the forks of thick branches. The clutch contains from 4 to 6 light-colored eggs, which incubate for 14 days. After another 2 weeks, the chicks are fully feathered, but for some time they feed at the expense of their parents.
A bird known as the white-browed thrush, the hazel thrush, and simply the white-browed thrush. Representatives of the species are easily distinguished by their wide pale yellow “eyebrows,” which are especially noticeable in the photo of the White-browed Thrush.
The species' range covers Northern Europe and Asia; for the winter, birds fly south, all the way to Africa.
The length of the white-browed bird is about 22 cm with a body weight of up to 60 g. The back of the birds is olive-brown with streaks. The belly is lighter, the lower wing coverts and the side surfaces of the chest are rusty-red.
Whitebrows settle in light deciduous forests with a predominance of birch and spruce woodlands; they avoid dense old forests. The bird's diet includes insects and earthworms.
White-browed nests are always located close to the ground, on the lower branches of bushes, in thickets of grass and rotten stumps. On a solid base, the nest looks solid and massive, on a bush it looks elegant, on the ground it looks hastily built. There are from 3 to 6 eggs in a tray; re-laying is usually smaller. Parents feed their offspring by throwing whole bunches of earthworms into the nest. The chicks are very active and 10 - 12 days after hatching they are already running quickly on the ground under the supervision of their parents.
This is a bird about 22 cm in size and a wing length of 12 cm. The male can be recognized by his bluish-gray back, lighter belly and brownish legs. Females and juveniles are distinguished by an olive-brown color with reddish sides, a light belly, a mottled throat and bright yellow-orange legs and underwings.
Common blackbirds are found across a wide area of South Asia from Nepal to Pakistan and make seasonal migrations to Central Europe.
The birds make their nests in trees; the clutch contains 3-4 pale green eggs with small speckles.
Birds are famous for their enchanting melodic vocals, reminiscent of the sounds of a sad flute, which can be heard at dawn and dusk.
The blackbird is a large bird, its length including the tail is about 26 cm with a body weight of up to 125 g. Males are distinguished by their completely black plumage, yellow-orange beak and ring around the eyes. Females and young specimens are brown, dark-tailed, with a light throat and belly.
Blackbirds are widespread in European countries, the European part of Russia and the Caucasus. Birds inhabit both deciduous and coniferous forests, as well as city gardens and parks. They feed on insects, earthworms, and enjoy eating berries and plant seeds.
Nests are built high in trees or almost on the ground; city dwellers can make a nest in a flower box on the balcony or in a garden bucket. The clutch contains from 4 to 7 greenish-blue eggs, covered with spots and strokes of brown color.
Blackbird dinner.
It is a typical inhabitant of South American countries from Uruguay to Bolivia, as well as the official symbol of Brazil. Red-bellied blackbirds winter in the tropics, and with the onset of warm weather they migrate to temperate latitudes.
The body length of the birds is about 25 cm. Females and males are colored the same brown with a rusty-red belly and a white throat. The bird's beak is yellow, and some individuals have yellow circles around their eyes.
The diet of red-bellied blackbirds includes insects and worms in equal parts, as well as the fruits of many tropical plants. When birds eat guava, papaya, cherries and oranges, they spit out undigested seeds, thereby spreading the fruiting plants.
The nests are located at a height of up to 4.5 m above the ground, the clutch consists of 2-6 light speckled eggs, incubation lasts about 13 days.
These birds live and nest throughout North America and are common inhabitants of gardens and parks. Individual representatives of the species are sometimes recorded in European countries.
The size of adult birds is 20 - 28 cm with a body weight of about 77 g. The head, back, tail and top of the wings are painted black or dark gray. The belly and chest are red-orange, the throat is white. The eyes are surrounded by an intermittent ring of white, which is clearly visible in the photo of the blackbird.
During the breeding season, the main diet consists of all kinds of beetles, ants and butterflies. In autumn, sumac, cherries, blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries predominate.
For nesting, birds choose tree forks, dense bushes or niches in buildings located no higher than 7 m above the ground. There are from 3 to 6 pure blue eggs in a clutch. Depending on the weather, a couple can produce offspring 3 times per season.
Fieldfare
One of the most common species of blackbirds, whose range extends throughout all European countries, Central Asia and North Africa.
The fieldfare is variegatedly colored: the head and rump are gray, the back is brown, the underwings and belly are white, the chest is strewn with bright streaks. This is a large thrush with a body length of 25 - 28 cm and a weight of up to 130 g.
Unlike most relatives, fieldfares do not nest individually, but in colonies of 30 - 40 pairs, setting up nests on the edges of forests and in park areas. The clutch contains from 4 to 7 pale green eggs with a brown spot. During the season, a couple manages to breed offspring 2 times.
The birds got their name due to the collective eating of mature mountain ash. Representatives of the species are quite warlike and, in defense of themselves or their offspring, throw stones from a height at people and animals or liberally bombard uninvited guests with droppings.
Fieldfare thrush on a rowan tree. 
Fieldfare thrushes on a rowan tree. 
Fieldfare thrush forages for rowan. 
Fieldfare thrushes feed on mountain ash in winter. 
Fieldfare blackbirds with a rowan berry in their beak. Today, most species of blackbirds are quite numerous and the state of their populations does not cause concern.
Dedicated to my friend from Novosibirsk, ornithologist Dzhusupov Talgat Kaisarovich.
May 29. It rained all day, saturating the Moscow region's soil, which had dried out under the scorching sun, with life-giving moisture. Lightning flashed, with a crash and roar, new portions of a continuous, refreshing downpour fell from the constantly moving clouds. Sharp gusts of wind noisily bent the thick branches of centuries-old trees.
In the afternoon, the storm clouds went beyond the horizon, the sky cleared, the bright sun, reflecting from every wet leaf and every blade of grass, blinded my eyes. Nature took a deep breath of fresh and moist air, and then splashed out the evening coolness and the sweet singing of various birds around.
I’m sitting on a rocking chair under the oak and spruce trees, putting an unfinished glass of weak tea on the table. In vain I peer into the dense tangles of oak branches and spruce paws, trying to see a song thrush singing overhead through the video camera screen. I’ve been listening to his melodic cries every day for more than a month, often catching more and more new lines that he inserts into his song. A little to the side of him, a pied flycatcher sings its song, trying to please its female, sitting on her eggs in a brand new nest box. The cries of fieldfares are heard from different directions. They are constantly preoccupied with something, either chasing each other, then all together pouncing on the nosy and curious magpie-thief, a great lover of eating bird eggs or fledgling chicks, then attacking the ubiquitous squirrel, and she, not paying the slightest attention to them , patrols his territory. On a hazel branch, an orange-breasted robin timidly tries to compose its sad song. The lively finch, not paying attention to everyone, over and over again performs its very loud short song with a characteristic
with a flourish at the end.
So, imperceptibly one day gives way to another, warm air masses gave way to cool ones, and in the second half of June in the Moscow region, both day and night, one thunderstorm gave way to another. It became sharply cold. The blackbirds gradually stopped their roulades, the song thrushes were no longer heard, occasionally their alarming “click” would timidly sound in the bushes, and then there was silence again. The blackbirds have no time to sing now. Every day their chicks become more and more voracious, and parents are busy searching for food for them and for themselves from early morning until late evening.
In the middle of the day, the black-headed warbler will sing its enchanting flutes. While the songs of the garden warblers have not yet ceased in the nettle thickets, in the evenings you can hear the cooing of the wood pigeon, and the tireless chiffchaffs repeat their endless hasty songs in every possible way - “shadow, shadow, tink, tink, tang, shadow...”. In the mornings, just like in the spring, the woodpeckers begin their drumming, the oriole calls with its unique flute, and the great tits with their numerous offspring are already beginning to wander, examining every tree, making large circles around the territory of the dacha cooperative.
Jays and fieldfare thrushes spend entire days meticulously exploring all the nooks and crannies of carefully tended strawberry beds, tasting all the ripe red berries, and completely destroying the fruits of honeysuckle and serviceberry, to the great indignation of summer residents.
It is almost impossible to fight birds; jays and blackbirds quickly realize that various shiny and rotating gadgets in the form of pinwheels and ribbons, exotic scarecrows pose no threat to their thieving business.
Cold morning at the end of June. Saturday. The sky is covered to the horizon with heavy leaden clouds driven by the north wind. It will probably rain nasty cold rain again today. He opened the front door, looked down at the floor and stopped in a daze.
The blackbird, his eyes closed forever, lay near the door on the porch, both wings spread out, as if preparing for a swift flight from the top of the spruce tree to the ground, the tail was fanned out and unnaturally bent over the back. Some kind of cloudy liquid spilled from the beak onto the floor. Based on the light chest with clear dark streaks, the large head with gray hair and other features, he determined that it was a male song thrush and, apparently, not a young one.
I stood over him in complete indecision and did not know how to adequately react to such an unpleasant event. Many questions immediately arose. Why did he die at my doorstep? How to react to this unpleasant fact? Is there any mysticism in this phenomenon? My whole life has convinced me that there are no accidents in our existence. In my opinion, in our single and integral world, everything is cause-and-effect. Any “random” event seems random only because we are not able to identify a series of events that preceded it.
They couldn’t give him a lift; after all, there was a high fence, it was a long way from the porch, and there was no one to give him a lift. The neighbors left their dachas a few days ago and went home due to the prolonged cold and rainy weather. Why did the thrush die at a time when there was enough natural food around? Maybe he was poisoned by some unscrupulous neighbor who jealously guarded his strawberry beds from annoying jays and blackbirds? I returned to the veranda, put on my work gloves and examined the blackbird. I found no external damage on the body. Is this the same thrush whose wonderful songs in the crown of the oak trees I recorded on video just four weeks ago?
The bird found eternal peace under a huge spruce tree in the forest, and for several days I was impressed by the unusual find.
My song thrush, living in a cage on the veranda, fed and well-groomed, was still calling out its various melodic calls from early morning, not suspecting what was going on in the soul of its owner.
The next day, meteorologists promised the beginning of another warming. At least I heard something positive over the past few days. Warming and sunny weather means that children and grandchildren will come, it will be noisy and fun, life will begin to boil again, swirling in a whirlpool of everyday worries. As if to confirm my rosy reasoning, on the border with the neighboring dacha, a whole group of jays started another scandal in the dense tangles of tall spruce trees. Their disgusting, piercing screams were heard from everywhere. What made them so angry? Probably, again the squirrel inadvertently wandered into the territory they controlled.
I remembered the old days of the early eighties, a glider flight along a 100 km triangular route in the Leningrad region. The weather was not particularly favorable with rising air currents, and I did not take into account the increased headwind, lost altitude and fell a little short of reaching the airfield. He reported on the radio about the location of the off-airfield landing and landed on the edge of a mown field near the village of Velkota. Got out of the glider, walked around the entire field, assessed the possibility of accepting
towing aircraft, landing and takeoff direction.
The field was flat and fully satisfied all safety conditions, both for receiving an aircraft and for taking off as part of an air train.
With the help of a local resident who was stacking dried mown hay into small piles, we rolled the glider back closer to the forest belt. I sat down by the wing lowered to the ground and began to wait for the plane, which could appear at any minute.
From the rustling summer foliage of the forest belt, intermittent sound waves were born and covered the honey-smelling field of freshly cut grass with the discordant melodies of various birds. The strong ones stood out especially
and the clear whistles of a song thrush. He was sitting on the top of the nearest tree and his dark silhouette swaying on a dry branch was clearly visible against the background of a white cloud.
Several decades have passed since then, but I vividly remember those beautiful whistles and clear diction, which is now difficult to describe in words. The blackbird repeated each knee twice, or even three times; the most complex whistling sounds were pronounced up to four times in a row. The most significant thing for me at that time was the realization that there was no vocal sequence, such as, for example, in the nightingale. Each cry is a new, talentedly performed improvisation. It seemed to me that when shouting some kind of knee that was already familiar to me, the blackbird was changing either tone or volume, but at the same time he was experiencing obvious pleasure from his song, which had neither beginning nor end. WITH
Since then, song thrushes have become one of my favorite vocal birds, along with nightingales and black-headed warblers.
I caught my first song thrush in the late eighties. I walked for a long time along the surrounding forest edges in search of an outstanding soloist. A lot of blackbirds arrived, and the density of their settlement in the territory adjacent to Sheremetyevo Airport turned out to be quite high. It was not easy to choose a singer to my liking; there was no classical “spiridon” in the repertoire, and some knees were performed, in my opinion, too creaky.
I found a good singer by mid-April on the very edge of an old mixed forest, with developed undergrowth of hazel and young low spruces not far from the customs building. There was still a lot of snow under the trees in the forest, but the strip of forest near the field was almost dry. Large red ants hurriedly collected some sticks and seeds of meadow grass and carried their load under the old spruce.
It's good to be in a pine-smelling forest! Blue sky. The morning sun illuminated the tops of the trees, awakening from winter hibernation. The length of daylight has increased significantly. The sap flow that began from the roots somewhat changed the color of the tree trunks and branches. Some bushes turned red-brown. Spring has finally come into its own, charging all living things with positive energy.
I sit at a distance from the singing thrush on a birch trunk that has fallen from old age, watching all its movements. An hour and a half later, without much difficulty, he determined the place where he most often flew to find an earthworm, slug or some kind of bug under last year's withered, damp leaves. After the intended fishing location was determined, I cleared a circle of earth a meter in diameter from leaves and twigs, sprinkled some mealworm pupae and dry hamarus. He dug a small hole nearby, covered the bottom and walls with a piece of film, which he had prudently grabbed from the house to lay on a damp and cold log. Sit, watch and wait. This is not an easy task for a birder; you often have to wait for hours without much movement, watching the desired bird. I reinforced the edges of the dug hole with turf. Then he fetched water from a puddle in the field with a grocery bag. It turned out to be a good pond, near which later, upon arrival from wintering places, I caught lentils, warblers, crossbills and common buntings.
The next day after work I went towards the customs office, to the place that had been prepared the day before. I installed two networks. One at 90 degrees to the edge of the forest, the other along, in the depths. No racks were required. Four balls
the twines were thrown over the tree branches and the tops of the nets were raised to the required height. The lower loops of the net were secured with elongated pegs. The nets were well camouflaged by small fir trees.
Under a small Christmas tree, in the center of the right angle between the nets, I placed a cassette recorder with a recording of the song of a song thrush. While I was setting up the nets, a thrush sang far from me, but not high, in the hazel bushes.
When I turned on the tape recorder, the thrush's singing stopped, and he didn't make his voice again that evening. After two hours it began to noticeably get dark. There was no point in continuing fishing in the twilight, and even far from home. The cold began to penetrate the body through the jacket, and a warm sweater did not help. I walked along the edge of the forest towards the nets and saw a blackbird thrashing in the corner bottom pocket, almost on the ground. I rushed as fast as I could towards the net, as if at the embrasure of an enemy bunker, closed my pocket with my hands, hesitated a little, determining from which side the bird had flown into the net, and only then grabbed the hysterically screaming blackbird with my left hand, and with my right began to untangle its legs. He or not him? I inflated the feathers under the tail and was convinced by the large protruding part of the cloaca that it was a male. The joy that the blackbird was caught relatively easily was not overshadowed even by the fact that the entire left palm was stained with liquid droppings.
He quickly stuffed the bird into a small fabric carrier with a wooden frame, zipped up the bag, washed his hands, collected the nets and almost ran home. At home, first of all, I again carefully examined the caught bird. Despite all his protests, screams and attempts to cling to his finger with his beak, he tied the tips of his wings and put him in a box-type cage measuring 60x30x40 cm. Inside the cage, on the sand, he placed two special deep porcelain cups, one with water, the other with soft food and a hundred mealworms. I covered the front of the cage with a white sheet material so that the bird would be less worried.
In the morning, lifting the material, I saw that the thrush was sitting motionless on a perch, looking angrily at me, without blinking, as if I were an “enemy of the people,” but there were no worms in the cup. From that moment on, I was sure that the adaptation was proceeding normally, the thrush did not refuse food and after a while, in my opinion, it should begin to sing. On the third day I untied his wings. Then, almost two weeks of waiting for the song. I bought frozen ant eggs from a poultry market dealer at exorbitant prices and began adding them, teaspoonfuls at a time, to the main food. Perhaps his activity was influenced by the singing of songbirds, of which I had quite a few at that time? These are nightingales, robins, siskins, goldfinches, finches, larks and warblers. Maybe the action of ant eggs was a good stimulus? The blackbird began to sing from the early morning of May 1st. He didn’t sing loudly, but he shouted out exactly the knees for which I had chosen him. A couple of days later he sang in full force, early in the morning, as soon as it began to get light. It’s good that my balcony door is closed; it significantly muffles all strong external sounds.
I tried to write down in words everything that the song thrush says, but this idea failed. There was no “Spiridon” as such, but there was a similar clean knee, with an emphasis on the first syllable, which sounded very beautiful. You can, if you wish, roughly identify “Philip”, and “drink tea”, and “come out”, etc.
Rather, these were pure riding sounds, borrowed from the birds surrounding the blackbird, which he did not copy, like, for example, a bluethroat or a marsh warbler, but reproduced in a creatively processed form.
For this ability, many lovers give it preference even over the nightingale. All knees are usually repeated twice. Each knee is separated from the other by long pauses, which makes it similar to the eastern nightingale, but some knees, probably especially beloved by them, can be repeated many times.
Gradually, he developed his own “initiative”, which can clearly be pronounced with the word “drink too much - drink too much - drink too much.” Based on this “start” I began to determine the beginning of a new song. Number of different distinct words
in his long song is very great. During longer pauses, the song thrush, as if by chance, inserted so-called “pamperings”, which, in the general structure of the song, act as punctuation marks. Now I can’t remember, but I read from one of the authors of books on ornithology that talented thrushes use “pampering” with a special meaning, they use them to place accents, strengthening this or that knee, and in general the entire musical composition acquires a special integrity and harmony.
Year after year, the song thrush delighted me with his songs, adding new wings to his repertoire, but I wanted more, I wanted him to be more flexible, and maybe even tame. All my efforts in this direction did not lead to success.
Drozd was too strict and did not tolerate familiarity. Cleaning the cage was a very stressful experience for him.
One day, at the end of May, while walking through the small forest, on a low fir tree I discovered a nest of a song thrush with chicks, approximately 5-6 days old. A crazy thought flashed through my head - to take one chick and feed it, ultimately raising a calm, tame and excellent singing bird. Drozd, who lived with me for eleven years, sang beautifully and was perfectly suited to the role of teacher.
But how to choose exactly the male? Using all the knowledge about thrushes that I had at that time, I decided to take a risk and chose the two largest from the five chicks.
I examined the cloaca and chose the one whose cloaca was closer to the keel bone. The third, in my opinion, dubious sign is a sharp transition from the lower part of the beak to the throat, when looking at the bird in profile. The female has a smooth transition. In general, I chose one and brought it home. From the first minutes, the blackbird began to perceive me as its parent. When a hand approached his head, he opened his beak wide and, exposing his bottomless yellow-pink throat, simply demanded to be fed faster.
I fed him earthworms and mealworm pupae every hour. Sometimes he gave me a mash - “nightingale mixture” and fresh ant eggs. I took it to work in a cardboard box and spent the whole day in my office. The chick grew by leaps and bounds. Soon we had to move him into a cage. When I approached the thrush, he, like a small child, rejoiced at my appearance, rose on his paws, opened his beak wide, shaking his wings, swallowed the offered food with special love in his eyes, or even snatched worms and mealworm pupae right from his fingers. It was funny to watch how, having swallowed a dozen earthworms, he sat there, ruffled with a swollen crop, and periodically swallowed a long worm that was trying to crawl out of his beak.
Still not fully feathered, after eating, bending his paws, sitting with his stomach on a perch, closing his eyes and slightly raising the feathers on his sides and head, he began to test his voice, slowly whistling some melodies that only he could understand, more like prolonged whistling muttering. From the outside it seemed that he was talking to himself in his bird language.
The blackbird loved to sit in my palm, fly over my shoulder, and doze on my lap, but gradually his affection for me noticeably decreased, he became more timid, but, nevertheless, he continued to take worms from his fingers. When he put his hand into the cage, he moved away and no longer allowed him to stroke or scratch the back of his head. I began to recognize myself as an adult. A year later, his song took shape, but he sang in a low voice, rarely shouting out any song loudly. The cold attitude towards me that appeared after the first partial moult disappeared, and after it had completely moulted, the thrush again became trusting and affectionate.
In the second year he began to sing on par with the old blackbird, but still his singing differed sharply in the structure of his calls. There were many overlapping tribes, but he apparently formed his own repertoire thanks to the excellent surroundings, absorbing the songs of not only the songbird, but also the blackbird, the spotted blackbird, the blackbird, the skylark, the spinning top and many other birds living next to him on the loggia. I do not rule out the role of a genetic factor and the fact that, while still in the egg and after hatching from the egg, I heard my parent singing. As for appearance, he was always stately, bright and handsome.
I lost him because I allowed him to be weak and, indulging his constant desire for freedom, often allowed him to fly around the veranda. One day he fell into the gap between the wall and the chest of drawers on which his cage stood.
The bottom of the back wall of the chest of drawers was close to the wall, at the top there was a distance of about 8 cm between the wall and the chest of drawers. What could have frightened him, maybe he was chasing a spider? One can only guess how the blackbird fell into this cone, into this deadly trap from which there was no way to get out on its own. Since then, I have never let my pets out of their cages, no matter how tame and calm they are.
I did not take a new chick from the nest; a lot of work and time must be invested in its upbringing, and as a result, the “foster” may turn out to be a female. Females do not sing, there is no point in keeping a bird that does not sing, it cannot be released into the wild, since outside the cage it is doomed to inevitable death.
Together with me, my old blackbird experienced this loss, diligently conducting the numerous bird orchestra for another four years. In the last year, he preferred to sit on the lower perch or on the sand, however, he sang in the mornings, and in warm sunny weather during the day. In total, he lived at least three lives of his free brothers.
For several years I looked for a replacement for him, but did not find one. I caught a lot of thrushes with a bow and a net, but I came across either completely grouse, rushing around the cage at night, scaring all the birds living with me. The result was that in a matter of days their tails were completely broken off, or they did not sing at all. He gave them to his friend, Alexei Mikhailovich Solomasov, a bird hunter known to all old Moscow songbird lovers. He caught several dozen song thrushes every year. He kept everyone in small cages. Blackbirds with feathers on their tails and wings then successfully moulted in these cages, dressed in new plumage, became meek in behavior, and sang in the presence of people who were right there in the large kitchen. I understood the method of re-educating these birds, or rather the method of breaking their psyche, but I did not approve of such methods. Observing the process of feeding thrushes, I noted a high content of crushed sunflower in the “nightingale mixture”.
At the end of summer, almost seven years ago, I decided to catch a couple of the brightest goldfinches for the winter exhibition of songbirds and ornamental birds. I didn’t catch the required goldfinches that day, but a magnificent-looking male song thrush flew into the net. I didn’t let him out and brought him home.
Before this incident, I very rarely allowed myself to catch a bird that had not been previously listened to, as they say, “a pig in a poke.” In the mountains of Central Asia I caught a bluebird (another name for this bird is the purple thrush) and warblers. In these cases there was no choice; I was happy that I caught them at all. The third case is an eastern nightingale that caught my eye in the city of Gulkevichi, Krasnodar Territory. I caught it and brought it home to the Moscow region. Fortunately, the nightingale turned out to have an excellent song. And now for the fourth time. Again the hunting itch for a good thrush and hope for a successful choice. If you let go, what if the caught blackbird turns out to be a magnificent singer, for example, Chaliapin? How many similar cases have happened to me and my fellow birders. It happened that you would unravel an unsightly, at first glance, bird caught in a net, release it into the wild, and it would fly off to the nearest tree and start such a stunningly beautiful song. Your eyes will bulge, your breathing will stop, and then you will gasp and even “bite your elbows” out of frustration.
The blackbird began to sing in March of the following year. The repertoire turned out to be quite good, including a lot of original and beautiful knees. The song was not a purely classical song, which meant the performance of the knees described by K.N. Blagoslonov in the book “Birds in Captivity” and then quoted in every possible way by different authors in many printed publications.
He still lives in a cage on the loggia, survives the most severe frosts, and at the beginning of spring begins to sing his magnificent songs. It tolerates moving to the dacha at the end of April and back home in September calmly, singing first in the morning and finishing late in the evening, when the rest of the birds have long since fallen silent. I like his almost perfect appearance throughout the year, with the exception of molting periods, tireless diligence in singing
and agreeableness of character.
The song thrush is not picky about food. He eats nightingale mixture and ant eggs well. Loves mealworms, zofobas, earthworms, crickets. It eats well white berries, red elderberry and other small berries, such as honeysuckle, shadberry, bird cherry. In the second half of July, August and September, berries are almost the main food of song thrushes and black-headed warblers. I supplement the berry diet with a dozen mealworms and a small pinch of ant eggs. He will never give up finely chopped pieces of sweet fruit.
All thrushes love to splash around in a bathing suit for a long time, sometimes getting wet through, and then dry their feathers for a long time, lowering their wings and tail, constantly shaking themselves and straightening each washed feather with their beak. When kept outside in winter, in severe frosts, it is necessary to monitor water procedures, otherwise the bird can be killed. It’s even better to replace the water in the bathing suit and drinking bowl with fresh, fluffy snow.
I read an article on the Internet by A.S. Khomenkov “What the Birds Sing About” (www.portal-slovo.ru/impressionism/40783.php). Here are some excerpts from this article: “...scientists believe that “the most musical bird in the world is the spotted thrush living in North America. His songs (the duration of each of them is 1-1.5 seconds) sound “human” music, music that has reached an incredibly high level of development for the animal world” (Vasilieva, 1983, p. 205). In a slow-motion recording of a thrush’s song, scientists have discovered “two-line, four-line “stanzas”; sometimes the blackbird humanly repeats the second half of this “stanza,” sometimes varying it. In addition, the pied thrush knows how to “compose” harmonic accompaniment for its songs, like a second part. The same bird sings in two voices at once, as if it knew - and this is a considerable musical and biological sensation - as if it were familiar with the elementary laws of classical harmonies in “human” European music” (ibid., p. 205). At the same time, very often the singing of birds resembles folk melodies. In particular, researchers noted “the connections between the melody of bird songs and Tyrolean, Hungarian and Russian rhythms and musical intervals” (Simkin, 1990, p. 15).
However, even when performed alone, birds can show amazing perfection of form. Folklorists once came to Peter Szoecke and asked him to record the singing of a bird from his collection. Soke suggested that we start by listening to a recording of the singing of an African shaman. But instead of the shaman’s song, “I put on a tape recorder a tape recording the voice of an American spotted blackbird in 32x slow motion. The guests found these to be beautiful melodies, even somewhat familiar, and at the same time they experienced some confusion, since none of the musicologists (and among them were world-famous folklorists) knew (and could not know) what people these melodies belong. The guests were unanimous in only one thing: they doubted whether it was really the song of a shaman from Black Africa” (Vasilieva, 1983, p. 206). In their general opinion, such a perfect musical form “is characteristic of folk music of more developed social formations” (ibid., p. 206).”
And ornithologist-bioacoustics, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor Valery Dmitrievich Ilyichev is sure that the voices of songbirds have a healing effect on humans. As for the effect of the song thrush specifically on humans, its song with a uniform rhythm relieves rapid heartbeat and arrhythmia. Peter I himself loved to listen for a long time to the singing of song thrushes, which he singled out especially among all other songbirds.
I really like the last lines of the song about blackbirds, widely known in our country, performed by Gennady Belov (music by V. Shainsky, lyrics by S. Ostrovsky):
“Hats off! - Blackbirds are singing in the forest,
They sing for the soul, not for glory.”
Well and truly said, and even better sung! It is symbolic that the song was heard from television screens and on the radio in 1973, the year when I first consciously paid attention to the magnificent singing of these wonderful birds.
A bird living nearby, which a person tenderly cares for, even in a cage, in gratitude gives melodies that heal the soul, psyche and body, which cannot be replaced by any electronic recordings. Birds give joy, save from loneliness and inspire creativity in various directions - in art, literature and science.
Turdus philomelos
2000-5000 rub.
(Turdus philomelos)
Class – Birds
Order – Passeriformes, passeriformes
Family – Drozdidae
Rod - Drozdy
Appearance
Its body length is 210-250 mm, wing - 113-122 mm, wingspan - 340-390 mm, weight - 55-100 g. The top of the head, back and tail are chocolate brown, grayish. The belly is white, slightly buffy on the sides. The chest is yellowish, it and the belly are dotted with clear dark brown streaks, decreasing towards the throat. The underwings are reddish. There is no sexual or seasonal dimorphism. Young ones are more variegated and dull in color.
Habitat
Its range characterizes the song thrush as a northern, cold-hardy bird. It actively inhabits the northern regions of the Scandinavian Peninsula, and is numerous in the Eastern European forest-tundra, penetrating even into the tundra. The song thrush is actively spreading to the east. But it is absent in Southern Europe, on the islands of the Mediterranean Sea, although there are biotopes suitable for song thrushes there. It adheres to sufficiently moist dark coniferous and mixed forests with undergrowth and lightened areas.
In nature
Compared to the white-browed and fieldfare, the song thrush is rarely visible at the nest. He is generally more secretive: he silently stays in the area of the nest and watches the newcomer. An alarm signal is produced when there is strong excitement. Only a few times did we observe song thrushes that behaved as white-browed thrushes usually behave: they quickly swooped down on a visitor, gave an alarm signal and clicked their beaks threateningly. Of all the vocal reactions of the song thrush, only the cry of concern (“indicative signal”) sounds like a short “ko” of the white-browed bird. The calling call of a fledgling song thrush is a thin, rather drawn-out squeak - rather similar to the calling signal of an adult white-browed thrush. The alarm signal, which sounds like a hysterical “tix-tix-tix...” in the song thrush when attacking an enemy, has little in common with the chattering of the white-browed bird. The biological significance of the thrush's alarm call and behavior has been brilliantly demonstrated.
Like other thrushes, the song thrush most often searches for food on the ground. The food ration of chicks is dominated by earthworms, slugs and various species of Lepidoptera, both caterpillars and adults, sometimes beetles, sawflies and Diptera. These invertebrates form the basis of the food ration of song thrush chicks. However, the composition of the food of song thrush chicks can vary greatly depending on the timing of breeding, nesting biotope and weather conditions. Early broods receive mainly animal feed. As the berries ripen, thrushes begin to bring them to the chicks, and the berries sometimes make up over 1/4 of the chicks' total diet. Most often, thrushes bring blueberries to the chicks, sometimes bird cherry and serviceberry. The amount of berries and other plant foods (spruce seeds) increases during prolonged cold and wet weather, as well as in hot weather. Occasionally, song thrushes hunt viviparous lizards for their chicks and bring them their tails or even whole animals, the length of which is sometimes almost equal to the length of the chick's body.
Changes in the composition of food received by chicks to some extent reflect the nature of the food of adult birds, which at the end of summer themselves switch to berry food. At the end of July - the first half of August, song thrushes constantly stay in blueberry and raspberry thickets, and also fly from the forest to personal plots, where they, as well as white-browed and fieldfare, almost completely and in a short time peck bird cherry and serviceberry berries from some one particular bush. Other bushes are often left untouched. This selectivity is apparently explained by convenient approach. Song thrushes do not stay long in a habitat unusual for them: they will fly out of the nearest forest, swallow 8-10 berries in a row and fly back into the forest. This habit is especially characteristic of individuals making a stop during summer migrations, which are more widespread in song thrushes than in white-browed birds, and take place at night in July - early August. Summer migrations occur when there are still chicks in many song thrush nests. At this time, old birds and young birds from early broods fly. Summer movements can have different directions, but on the coasts of large bodies of water they are more definite.
Reproduction
Females usually appear a week later than males. When a female appears, the male performs a kind of ritual dance: he ruffles his feathers, lowers his wings and jumps around the female. If the female responds to the male with the same dance, then a pair is formed. After another week, the construction of nests begins, the location for which is chosen by the female. Of all the trees for nests, they prefer conifers - small spruces and junipers. They nest on the ground and in piles of brushwood much less often than white-browed birds, but the bulk of the nests are not located high: from 0 to 3 m.
The nest is similar to the nests of other thrushes: it is also cup-shaped and made from dry stems of herbaceous plants, sometimes moss, lichens, and thin twigs are found. The nest is abundantly sealed with earth. It differs from the nests of other blackbirds in that its inside walls are smoothly coated with clay mixed with wood dust, all of which is still moistened with sticky saliva, and as a result the nest appears to be plastered. It differs from the blackbird's nest in the complete absence of litter. In addition, in general it is much lighter than the nests of other thrushes - as a result, the song thrush is more demanding when positioning the nest for reliable camouflage than for good support. When building a nest, the female first determines the shape of the nest, rotating alternately on a pile of nesting material in different directions, and after that the male joins the construction. Eggs are laid from early to late May. The bulk of the eggs of the first clutches are laid at the end of the 1st decade of May. Some couples make 2 clutches; the 2nd clutch is laid in the 1st or 2nd decade of June. There are mainly 5 eggs, from 3 to 6 eggs. The eggs are bright blue, with a few dark specks. This sharply distinguishes its eggs from those of other blackbirds.
Basically, song thrushes are kept only by passionate lovers of bird song. And the point here is not only in its size and difficulty of keeping, but in the fact that the song thrush will never become tame - it is the most strict bird of all the species of its family. As a rule, blackbirds spend their entire lives wary of humans, and the most they can do is simply tolerate your presence.
Thrushes are kept in a large and spacious room. It is necessary to install perches at different levels so that the bird develops physically, jumping from perch to perch. One of them will become a stage from which the singer will delight you with his art. The feeder and tray must be retractable. It is better to place the door at the bottom end of the cage. Later it will be possible to place a bathing suit on such a door (you can cut it yourself from plexiglass), because The blackbird is a very clean bird and loves to swim. After swimming, the swimsuit should be removed immediately. The drinking bowl is placed, or better yet, hung outside the cage. There is no need to combine a drinking bowl with a bathing bowl, because... Bathing a thrush is accompanied by constant shaking off of feathers and so much dirt remains in the bathing suit that it simply cannot be used for drinking.
At home, when feeding thrushes, they adhere to a natural change in diet: in spring and summer, it is necessary to give more animal food, and the rest of the time, half of the diet should be plant food. In winter, birds are fed raisins and apple pieces. They love various cereals, especially those with milk, and white bread. In summer, vitamins are useful - fresh nettle leaves, lettuce, berries and fruits. Blackbirds readily eat all wild berries, as well as berries from the garden, as well as apples, pears, dried apricots and grapes. But there's nothing better than a mealworm! Not a single bird will refuse such a delicacy.
In captivity, the song thrush lives much longer than in the wild. According to the observations of ornithologists, thrushes live in the wild for 5 years, and among hobbyists you can find birds that have survived 20 years.
