Know your thrushes - Song and Mistle

Song and Mistle Thrush are two garden species that are readily confused; both are grey brown in appearance; both have a spotted breast and pale legs. However, with good views and the right pointers both can be identified with confidence.

[@normalil]

"That's the wise thrush, he sings each song twice over, lest you think he never could re capture that first, fine, careless rapture."

[@jamesgrey1227]

I was stood about 10 ft below a thrush, on the banks of the River Rhymni in Cardiff this morning, listening to its song. I'm now 99% convinced it was a song thrush. Thanks for the upload. Much appreciated.

[@timmckinstry8254]

I heard the distinctive rattling sound and saw it fly away. Now I know it was a Mistle Thrush, thanks for the video!

[@Meltyfairy]

wow! I LOVE BIRDS. I just saw a mistle thrush in Scotland!! It was so exciting to see a new bird. This video is excellent. Thank you xoxox

[@stnicholas54]

Two Mistle Thrush built their nest in a Sitka Spruce tree in my garden a few years back. They used all sorts of everything including torn scraps of blue plastic bags for the nest. In time three eggs hatched (my upstairs neighbour kept me up to speed as she had a much better view of the nest) and I waited patiently to see the young ones make their appearance but before I ever caught a glimpse of the chicks the nest was raided by Grey Crows one afternoon. I actually saw the Crows carry off two of the chicks and that was the end of that little saga. The one remaining chick fell out of the nest as the parents had skedaddled. The strange thing was that when I went out to see if I could do anything for the remaining chick one of the parents dive-bombed me from a neighbouring rooftop and hit me on the back of the neck. I never saw either of the parents again and doubtless the little chick did not survive the night. The empty nest remained until the following winter and it was a sad sight to look at each day even though I'm sure such things happen all the time in nature.

[@elfread]

sad. Thrushes fall regularly off nests and bang against windows... it is a bit common this tragic thing, so I did rescued two but twice they found a way to die somehow on their own ... I learned now. However Thrush is called someone a bit clumsy and naive in Italy... I love these birds though and I always got in great communication and love when looking after them.

[@Celandine2]

so sad! I've seen this too, other species. :(

[@dudleydevine8264]

Thanks for that. You've solved a bird song question my son and I puzzling over in the heart of Bristol. Some years ago I spotted a blackbird clearing it's throat in the heather on Exmoor. Not a song, a noise. It was full of intent and cared nothing for me. I was only ten feet away. Ready, he flew to the top of a thornbush and sang his songs over the wide land under a hot sky. Phew.

[@solitudeguard5688]

What a magnificent video. Perfect narration. Thank you very much.

[@user-pn2yd5fs2h]

1:03 that fact about the Song thrushes using rocks like anvils blew my mind i never knew they did that incredible!

[@checktheevidence]

I love the characterization of the thrush songs - very well captured in words. We have an extremely enthusiastic song thrush near us who seems to be singing almost for about 12 hours during the day at the moment! I can hear him/her now!

[@susanmcgonagle7025]

Very useful description and sounds. Now I know who's waking me at 5.00am!

[@mancpaul01]

3:45 today the noisy little git.. 😫

[@killmoresalmon]

Always used to think it was Big Fat Brown Sausage versus Skinny Tiny Feller. Yup, the Mistles would sing sad up on our moors in horrendous weather, bless 'em.

[@Lunasmum63]

That was an amazing description between the two especially the part about the football rattle, which helped me identify the mistle thrush in my garden. in fact I couldn't believe how many there were just on my street today, all I could hear was this "football rattle" going on almost above every other bird, I managed to count at least 10/12 mistle thrushes.

[@philcooper1274]

This is a really helpful film, thanks. I now know that I saw seven Mistle Thrushes recently, all together, bounding across the grass searching for food. An amazing sight.

[@jamestracey8316]

I live in Port Glasgow Scotland , I’ve always been aware of the wildlife around my neighbourhood since I was a kid , so it was good to hear and see the mistle thrush a few years back and now they are everywhere

[@eileendelany2346]

I like this Trush bird. They are fantastic singing in the morning time. hearing them sing a song on trees on a summer's day is fantastic,

[@drdavidsands]

I heard a Mistle Thrush today as I practiced T’ai chi in my small terraced house back garden. The bird was perched in the garden next door high in branches of a neighbour’s tree. The ‘rattle’ call caught my attention and the speckled breast feathers of the larger thrush made me wonder if it was the Mistle species. This video confirmed my tentative identification. Cheers.

[@andrewdking]

Gold Finches (now very common) also have a machine gun type song, so could be confused

[@colinwood8509]

Great info thank you......didn’t know the mistle thrush was so songful.

[@marchar5665]

Thank you for this identification crisis I have been having. Thought I had a mistle thrush in my garden, but it is a song thrush.

[@andrewdking]

The Mistle Thrush is much bigger and brave. It will take on Magpies if near its nest

[@PaxmanValentaClass43]

Thank you so much for the info. 😊

[@liliaaaaaaaa]

Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. I've started feeding the birds around my neighbourhood over the winter, going for a walk every morning putting little sprinkles of bird food out around under various trees, the birds have started being more familiar around me as I try and work out their song and how to ID the rarer ones. I knew I'd seen a thrush flying past before but the last 2 days I heard a bird clearly rattling I had no idea what it was then today it was singing melodically loud and clearly from one of the high trees. Remembering seeing the white tail stripes either side in flight helped me clearly ID it as a mistle thrush with this video. Thanks so much, we have the RSPB birdwatch coming up at the end of the month now in January so it will be great to be able to ID all the wide varying birds we have near me. Thanks! ✌🙏🐦🕊🦅🦉

[@gustophr]

Thanks. Helped me identify the two mistle thrushes I saw mobbing a magpie lunchtime today in Regent's Park, London. Football rattle nailed it! Great Spotted woodpecker video helped too - one flew in just after, red rump spot unmistakeable.

[@BTOvideo]

+gustophr Excellent - glad you are finding these videos useful. Su

[@reginaholten9837]

Thank you! I live outside Baltimore, MD USA and saw a pic of a mistletoe thrush posted on Twitter. Which landed me here to learn more.

[@nicolawillis2325]

thank you!

[@tinajones5641]

Excellent description of the differences between the two. Many thanks x

[@heatherstub]

Thank you for the lesson. I love birdsongs, and my favorites are the Wood Thrush, the Hermit Thrush and the Veery Thrush. They are so amazing.

[@andrewdking]

What country do you live in then ?

[@heatherstub]

@@andrewdking I live in the United States.

[@andrewdking]

@@heatherstub You have a very English name there.

[@heatherstub]

@@andrewdking Indeed, but I think it's Scottish. If the Irish say it's Irish, it's only because the Irish are Scotts whom the British government forced to live on the Emerald Isle, because they spoke their native tongue. But it was different to some extent from the Celtic Scottish ghelic.

[@andrewdking]

@@heatherstub I've just looked it up and Stubbs is a Anglo-Saxon name for a bunch of tree stumps and/or taken from a village named as such in Yorkshire ! I'd place that as English then. Being English myself, I've never heard of Scots being bunged over to Ireland because of how they spoke, a new one on me, unless it was part of the Highland Clearances.

[@paul6840]

Thanks for this. It’s taken a while to work it out but now I know I have a song thrush in my garden

[@jamesscaz8540]

Sadly, same here too. I live in the south west and over the years i seem to see less and less, and don't here them very often either.

[@Yawnyaman]

Saw two of each in a Belfast park today. Both incredibly tame. The mistle thrush is quite a bit bigger and paler and tends to stand more upright.

[@des632]

Brilliant, bto 👌👌♥️

[@Pixieworksstudio]

Thank you so much for that, and amazing pictures. I think the one in my garden is a missle thrush. She is nesting in my laurel. She makes a short sharp bo-bo noise when her beak is full, I assume she is letting her young know she is close by. Has anybody else heard this?

[@wordreet]

Thanks for uploading this. Now I know it's a Song Thrush that I'm hearing every morning at the moment as I walk up from the bus stop to go to work. At other times, I've also heard and seen blackbirds. At least two pairs around there, because I've seen two males having a stand off and two females at another time.

[@elizabethtaylor2144]

Thank you I was very surprised to find a thrush in my back yard in Morgan South Australia, last time I saw a thrush would have been 60 years ago in my grandmothers garden in Blackburn Victoria Australia. Hence my surprised.

[@badgieboo66]

I have a Mistle thrush visit every day last 3 days, it comes on my feeder. It's beautiful 😀 I live in Manchester.

[@armpitfuzz]

I've only seen one thrush in the past 2 years, they where plentiful when i was a kid !

[@janiedunn637]

Gorgeous bird

[@Oakleaf700]

We had a bitter winter a few years back, and some ''big thrushes'' appeared in a flock in our garden...but they looked like they had been carrying hot water bottles under their wings...a warm flush of red. My friend said they were Redwings. [with Fieldfares in attendance too]..which they were. We only ever see them in very cold weather, when they enter suburban areas to strip berries from Cotoneaster, and of course, bird feed sprinkled on the snow for hungry larger birds who cannot use hanging seed feeders

[@BTOvideo]

Felshampo - Check the volume control under the video window isn't muted, and failing that, the volume control on the device you are using to watch the video. If this is all functioning, it may be an issue with Flash - check if Flash requires a software update. Apologies if these all sound obvious - the narration is functioning for me across several different browsers.

[@Willesden_Rab1_TV]

in the film hobbit unexpected journey - right at the end - a thrush wakes the dragon by using the mountain like you said at 1:03 as an anvil to crack open a snail i always call it a song thrush but its probably a mistle thrush - as the bird i see looks like this 3:09 great video - two thumbs up

[@spyderman375]

I love thrushes, more than any other bird, so feisty and British (although probably not lol). Wasn't aware of the differences so thanks, with regards to other posters mentioning their decline etc, I've noticed flocks of them near me during Dec, Jan and Feb, literally 30-40 of them at a time feeding in the cemetary near my home, these are an anomaly because i'm sure i went years only seeing the odd one or two every few months, now there seems to be lots of them wich I'm glad about, i think they're song thrushes I'm seeing, didn't think they hung around in flocks but i'm not big on 'birding' or whatever the term is, maybe there's a good snail/worm harvest? - they may not be so freindly with each other once the breeding season starts, i don't know

[@elfread]

just potted one nesting on the tree in front of my house and searched. I soon saw that was not a standard Thrush, after I rescued up a couple of them in the past. bigger and lighter... now this is certainly her Mistle Thrush mum

[@TheJackdaw77]

Thanks for this, good to know!

[@user-go8oj4dl4w]

3:02 "the spots point downwards". They look like they're pointing up to me.

[@JonCPN]

Just seen six thrushes alongside eight blackbirds on our lawn. I'm no expert but from this video I think they were Song Thrushes - brown hue, clean and neat birds, much smaller than the Blackbirds. No sign of the stripe on the head or red underwing of the Redwing either. Lovely video - useful to see the differences between the two thrushes.

[@hater105]

I am the King of the Dale and can understand what they're saying.

[@gardeniainbloom812]

I think it's the Song Thrush that insist on waking me up at an ungodly hour. Good to know.

[@CJDJgamer]

Thank you

[@majora646464]

So I'm a hipster looking around youtube for new music, I clicked on this video thinking its a song called "Know your Thrushes" by Song and Mistle and thought it sounded cool...

[@dontalkt2meboutheros]

You seem to be someone who would know their herbs better.

[@vinceyreay]

The alarm call of the Mistle Thrush sounds quite similar to that of the Magpie.

[@SADRIO_LAVONTE]

Nice video 👍

[@holyeti3553]

I'm hearing the rattle now and if sounds harsher and more distinct

[@BTOvideo]

Try our latest video on 'Nightingale and Other Night Singers' - . Most of the other videos also touch on bird song and call for the specific species.

[@Hunter_13337]

I found a songthrush egg in the forest today and took it home with me cuz it wasn't in a nest

[@andrewwebster2598]

I can’t understand how uncommon the song thrush is now in Scotland. I still see mistle thrush all the time in Glasgow though

[@graememudie3306]

do you think that you could stop nattering through the mistle thrush song so we can actually hear it?

[@Pahalintu]

Nice video :)

[@geoffcooper2735]

Up to six thrushes using my bird feeders.They are speckled all over except their heads.Some have pale heads,some have much darker heads.Any ideas anyone ?

[@francesco3738]

Ma in Inghilterra i puted tirè ma i tord gaggièr?

[@johnharris8393]

Good stuff my lady. How refreshing it is to hear somebody that knows what they're talking about. A lot of information about the bird world is, by my rating, pathetic!

[@basilvictorhomer]

Sorry but I'm still confused. From 3.03 the narrator says 'The spots on the breast (of the mistlethrush) are rounded blobs, which if seen clearly, point downwards." Yet the blobs on the bird illustrated during this bit of commentary clearly point upwards!

[@littlewig200]

Only the ones on the throat point upwards. The majority on the lower body are directionless blobs

[@littlewig200]

Or like they say pointing downwards if you have a keen eye

[@billy4072]

👍yippee got a songthrush 😂

[@peterabbott3822]

extremely rare is the song thrush,nowdays ..

[@markharris5771]

peter abbott In Central Lancashire we do see some song thrushes, nothing like when I was a boy though. However, I cannot remember seeing a mistle thrush in possibly decades.

[@elainewatson2101]

cool

[@sascha7940]

♥️♥️

[@holyeti3553]

Trying to find out what bird woke me up this morning with a loud rattle like song , like a football rattle ?

[@jane9875]

never seen a mistle thrush sadly

[@felshampo]

Where is the narration??????

[@williamcoley9171]

sadly there are no song thrushes in Liverpool where i live .. in the 60and 70 they were plentiful but now there are millions of magpies instead which i hate since they pull young blackbird chicks out of the best just for fu n

[@Oakleaf700]

William...It is so sad, the magpie invasion. I too have witnessed the depradations of nestboxes..we had a nestbox that the magpies learned to pull the securing pin out of to get the fledgelings.. [the box is screwed shut now] I then saw a magpie visit a telegraph pole electric box up high, and it proceeded to tug all the fittings..they are clever birds, but maybe get an air gun, or someone who can control these predators swiftly with a clean shot? [In urban environments this might be difficult..you don't want to hit a neighbour.which is the reason I don't shoot Pies...despite wanting to. I respect their intelligence, but they do kill so many songbirds.. plus cats kill many songsters , too...purely for the fun of it. :(

[@aaronc1407]

Magpies became less common at the start of the 20th century due to heavy persecution but besides that have always been a ubiquitous bird in the UK. Magpies and song thrushes have lived alongside one another for thousands of years without any problems. Maybe the decline in song thrushes is down to something else.. perhaps people destroying their natural habitat? Hmm.. possibly! We are always quick to blame everything else other than ourselves but the simple fact of the matter is we are the most destructive species on the planet and have caused countless species to go extinct. If song thrushes eventually go extinct then that will probably be our fault too. Magpies are a native species and a beautiful one at that - they have just as much right to exist and go about their business as any other bird, and at least they only kill other birds during breeding season when it's necessary - unlike cats who kill for the sake of it (cats are by far the biggest killer of songbirds so maybe you should shoot them instead).

[@barnabydixon5893]

we've got some down here in Chester, they're not super common, but I see them when walking especially around the back of the zoo, they're amazing singers, they never seem to sing the same song twice somehow!

[@kerry5586]

The reduction in thrushes is not due to magpies, it is due to humans poisoning them: they poison slugs and snails which the thrushes eat. Look up the effects of slug pellets on wildlife and realise that once again it is humans killing all these birds not other birds being responsible.

[@lostinfens]

@@kerry5586 That's true, I've argued with farmers around here about the large scale use of pellets. To a man, they are unrepentant & unless offered yet more cash from the public purse would allow the use of poisons to continue unabated. But there is also some truth in that Magpies are a pest to beleaguered song birds as I myself have witnessed. Magpies are the one species that I tend to shoo away.

[@SweSimone]

I once was attacked buy a mistle thrush. The nest wasnt even close it was just a stupid birdy

[@thesilentmothtrapper4373]

The are very aggressive and have been known to kill jackdaws

[@goognamgoognw6637]

I love birds, This means i am for controlling human populations and to change the laws that allow the destruction of nature to build more human dwellings.

[@richardd3663]

What is it about KZbin posters, they love the sound of their own voices no matter what the subject. I want to hear the song of the bird not a verbal description of it!!

[@azurestocking9043]

What a ridiculous comment on a video which is meant to demonstrate the differences (in size, stance, plumage, flight, etc.) of these two birds. There is plenty of song, and if you want more, then go to sites such as the RSPB one which give that. How do you know she loves the sound of her own voice? She is the narrator on an informative video. Video is the name, not audio.

[@adibshearani5319]

احكو عربي لو خالتي

[@billyarmstrong7912]

If you could stop your mouth for 2 minutes whilst the mistle thrush was singing it would have been great.

[@andrewwest9252]

It would have helped if you did not talk over the bird song.....

[@BTOvideo]

Thank you for your feedback Andrew, we'll make sure to take it into consideration for future videos.

[@joedisco]

Good info but you need to speak a bit less when illustrating the main calls, rather than talk all over them!