Another lifer today at St George's Park was the mistle thrush. At first, I thought it was the female of the redwing. I could recognise that both birds were thrushes because now that I know that American robins are thrushes, you can kind of recognise them. They look similar in size and shape with varying degrees of browns and rusty reds, except for the blackbird, but its behaviour is unmistakably thrush-like. But given that there was only one of these birds, what I thought was the female, and it was mostly brownish and beige with just some hints of rusty red here and there, it seemed like a good guess that it was a female. But I had to do some research when I got home because even the Merlin app wasn't entirely sure. Through my research, I found out that like most thrushes, males and females aren't so different from each other--again, except for the blackbird as his female counterpart is brown--so that what I was seeing must have been a different species of thrush altogether. After looking through several pages trying to see if I could determine if my new thrush was a song thrush or a mistle thrush, I was able to determine that what I saw was indeed a mistle thrush. Either way, I would have been very excited.
What I really love about the mistle thrush is the spotted front. It's similar to the northern flicker, which is one of my favourite birds because I love the spotted breast it has. Whereas the flicker looks more light grey or beige-ish with black spots, the mistle thrush is beige with some hints of rusty red and brown or auburn spots. It's beautiful!
I should mention that I did see a third lifer today, a dunnock, but unfortunately I couldn't get a photo. Hopefully I'll see another one to get a photo of it. It was right near our apartment building, so maybe there will be more!
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