The Missel Thrush. 



Family— TURDID.^E. Subfamily— TURBINE. 



The Missel Thrush. 



Jidiliis visciz'onis, LiNN. 



THIS, the largest of our resident Thrushes, breeds throughout the suitable 

 districts of temperate Europe, from Norway southward to Spain, and 

 even to Northern Africa. Eastward, its range extends through Turkestan 

 to the North-western Himalayas and Lake Baikal in Siberia ; it is resident in 

 many of the milder regions, but the greater number winter in Southern 

 Europe and Northern Africa, the Siberian birds migrating to Northern India, 

 Persia, and iVfrica north of the Sahara. 



In Great Britain the Missel Thrush is generally distributed throughout 

 England and Wales; in Ireland also, since 1800, it has become tolerably 

 common ; in Scotland its range has gradually extended northwards throughout 

 most of the Hebrides ; in the Orkneys it has appeared after easterly gales, 

 but from Shetland it has not been recorded. 



The upper parts of the adult bird are greyish olive brown, slightly 

 darker on the head, and slightly more golden on the lower back ; the variation 

 of tint is, however, barely perceptible ; the under parts (excepting the chin 

 and throat, which are white, and the cheeks which are huffish white) are buff, 

 strongly pronounced in young birds, but growing paler year by year until, 

 in old birds, it becomes huffish white ; the fore-chest and flanks are of a 

 deeper buff, the cheeks and sides of neck indistinctly streaked with greyish 

 brown and a few spear-shaped spots ; on the chin and throat the spots are 

 more arrow-shaped, on the fore-chest black and spear-shaped, and on the 

 remainder of the under parts fan-shaped ; the upper wing-coverts are broadly edged 

 at the tips with dull white, the flights are slaty-grey, the primaries with 

 white outer edges, the secondaries externally suffused with huffish, and nar- 

 rowly tipped with white; under wing coverts and axillaries pure white; tail 

 feathers smoky- grey, narrowly pale- edged towards the tips ; bill dark brown, 

 paler towards the base, especially on the lower mandible ; legs pale brown ; 



A 



