All species › Passerines › Thrushes and allies › Clay-colored Thrush
Clay-colored Thrush | Turdus grayi
Grays lijster | Mirlo pardo | Sabiá-cor-de-barro
The Clay-colored Thrush is a plain brown thrush of Central America that in the guide area reaches only northern Colombia. It lives close to people, in gardens, parks and farmland. It is the national bird of Costa Rica.
Voice
The song is a long, fairly slow series of clear, fluty phrases, often before dawn and mainly at the start of the rainy season. The call is a plaintive, rising tee-oo-ee, also a dry chok.
Recording: Max Noack — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
23–25 cm. The upperparts are olive-brown, the underparts paler buff-brown to clay-brown, and the throat is paler with fine brown streaks. The iris is reddish brown, without a broad bare eye-ring. The bill is olive-yellow to greenish yellow and the legs are grey-brown. The sexes are alike. Young birds have pale spots on the upperparts and dark spots on the breast.
Confusion species
Spectacled Thrush Turdus nudigenis has a broad, bare yellow eye-ring and a white belly, and is greyer above. Pale-breasted Thrush Turdus leucomelas has a grey head contrasting with the brown back. Cocoa Thrush Turdus fumigatus is warm rufous-brown and lives in forest. Black-billed Thrush Turdus ignobilis has a dark bill.
Habitat
Open woodland, forest edges, scrub, plantations, pasture with trees, gardens, parks and towns in the lowlands, up to about 1500 m. It often searches lawns and open ground for earthworms and other invertebrates, and trees for fruit. The nest is a cup of mud and plant material in a tree or shrub or on a building.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Colombia in the north and north-west: in the Caribbean lowlands from Urabá and Córdoba to Atlántico, Magdalena and Cesar, at the foot of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and in the northern Magdalena valley. Absent from Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area from extreme southern Texas and Mexico to Panama.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search parks, gardens and yards in villages and towns in the Caribbean lowlands, where birds walk on lawns and sing from rooftops and trees.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species benefits from deforestation, farmland and urban green space.
Scientific name
Turdus grayi | Bonaparte, 1838
Bonaparte described the species in 1838 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Turdus was introduced in 1758 by Linnaeus. The genus name comes from Latin turdus, 'thrush'. The species name probably honours George Robert Gray (1808–1872), British ornithologist at the British Museum; his brother John Edward Gray (1800–1875) may be meant instead. The specimen the first description was based on came from Alta Verapaz, Guatemala.