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Olive Thrush | Turdus olivaceus
Kaapse lijster | Zorzal Oliváceo
The Olive Thrush is the familiar thrush of gardens, parks and montane forest in the south and east of South Africa. It hops over lawns and through leaf litter, runs a short way, stops and then pulls up a worm. At dusk it sings from a high branch.
Voice
The song is a series of clear, fluting phrases of a few notes, each repeated and varied after a short pause, such as wheet-tu-wheeoo, mainly at dawn and at dusk. The contact call is a thin, high tseep, often in flight; in alarm a high, rattling chuk-chuk-chuk.
Recording: African Bioacoustics Community — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
A large, dark thrush of 22 to 24 cm. The upperparts are plain olive-brown and the throat white with fine dark streaks. The breast is olive-brown to greyish-brown, the flanks and belly warm orange-rufous, and the undertail coverts white with dark spots. The bill is orange-yellow, the legs yellowish-brown, and there is a narrow yellow eye-ring. The sexes are alike. Juveniles show pale drop-shaped spots above and black spots below.
Confusion species
Karoo Thrush (Turdus smithi) of the dry west and the interior is greyer, with a duller grey-brown belly and orange only on the flanks; intermediates occur in the Free State and along the rivers of the Northern Cape. Kurrichane Thrush (Turdus libonyana) of the bushveld has a white belly, black malar stripes beside the white throat and orange only on the flanks. Groundscraper Thrush (Turdus litsitsirupa) is grey with black-spotted underparts and a black-and-white face pattern. Outside the Olive Thrush's range, in the mountains of Malawi and Zambia, lives Abyssinian Thrush (Turdus abyssinicus).
Habitat
Afromontane forest, wooded ravines and riverine forest, and also gardens, parks, golf courses, orchards and plantations of exotic trees. Forages on the ground for earthworms, snails and insects in leaf litter and on lawns, and also takes fruit and berries. The nest is a sturdy cup of grass and moss, reinforced with mud, in a tree fork.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
In the region mainly in South Africa: the Western and Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, the Highveld of Gauteng and Mpumalanga and the Limpopo escarpment, and throughout Lesotho and in Eswatini. A separate population (swynnertoni) inhabits the montane forests of Zimbabwe's Eastern Highlands and adjacent western Mozambique; it is sometimes placed with Abyssinian Thrush. The species occurs nowhere outside southern Africa.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria the Olive Thrush is one of the commonest garden birds; look for it early in the morning on watered lawns. In the interior, where it meets Karoo Thrush, check the belly colour: warm orange right down to the legs points to Olive Thrush.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species is common and has expanded its range considerably on the Highveld with the planting of gardens, parks and plantations. Cats, window strikes and the loss of indigenous forest are local threats, but the population is stable.
Scientific name
Turdus olivaceus | Linnaeus, 1766
Linnaeus described the species in 1766 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Turdus was introduced in 1758 by Linnaeus. Turdus is the ordinary Latin word for 'thrush'. olivaceus is Latin for 'olive-coloured' — for the olive-brown upperparts. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cape of Good Hope.