Bicknell's Thrush

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Bicknell's Thrush

Conservation status

Vulnerable

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Turdidae
Genus:	Catharus
Species:	C. bicknelli

Binomial name

Catharus bicknelli
(Ridgway, 1882)

Synonyms

Catharus minimus bicknelli

The Bicknell's Thrush, Catharus bicknelli, is a medium-sized thrush.

Adults are olive-brown on the upperparts, slightly redder on the tail. The underparts are white with gray on the flanks; the breast is greyish brown with darker spots. They have pink legs, a faint grey eye ring, and gray cheeks. They are slightly smaller than the very similar Gray-cheeked Thrush but apart from that all but indistinguishable in outward appearance. Together with this, it forms a cryptic species pair and was indeed formerly considered conspecific [1]. Bicknell's and the Gray-cheeked Thrush make up a close-knit group of migrant species together with the Veery (Winker & Pruett, 2006).

Their breeding habitat is the coniferous forests in southeastern Quebec to Nova Scotia and northern New England and New York state. These birds are usually found at higher elevations. They make a bulky cup nest close to the trunk of a conifer.

These birds migrate to the West Indies, (the Greater Antilles), with an estimated 90% of the individuals wintering on Hispaniola [2].

They forage on the forest floor, mainly eating insects, wild fruits and berries.

This bird's song is a jumbled series of flute-like tones ending on a higher note. They are very secretive during the nesting season.

This bird's numbers are declining in some parts of its already limited range as a result of habitat destruction.

This bird was named after Eugene Bicknell, an American amateur ornithologist, who discovered the species on Slide Mountain in the Catskills in the late 19th century.

[edit] References

BirdLife International (2004). Catharus bicknelli. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 11 May 2006. Database entry includes a range map and justification for why this species is vulnerable

Winker, Kevin & Pruett, Christin L. (2006): Seasonal migration, speciation, and morphological convergence in the avian genus Catharus (Turdidae). Auk 123(4): 1052-1068. [Article in English with Spanish abstract] DOI: 10.1642/0004-8038(2006)123[1052:SMSAMC]2.0.CO;2 HTML abstract