Pied Thrush

The pied thrush is a thrush about 22cm long. The male is conspicuously black and white: mostly black above with a long white eyebrow and white tips to the wing coverts, tertials, rump and tail, and white below with black spots on the flanks, with a yellow bill and legs. Females and young birds have the same pattern in browns, with scalier underparts. Its bill is less curved than those of the long-billed and dark-sided thrushes, and females lack the pale cheek spot of the female Siberian thrush (Wikipedia, general species account).

Like many thrushes it forages on the leaf litter below the forest undergrowth. When disturbed it flies up into the trees and sits still, which makes it hard to find. Its species name honours Samuel Neville Ward, a colonial administrator who supplied the first specimen. SoIB 2023 treats it as endemic to the Indian subcontinent and a migrant within India with a very restricted range, has too little data for a trend, and rates it a High conservation priority (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).