Turdus pallidus
Silhouette: Sharon Wegner-Larsen · PhyloPic
In 3 days <5% in a week ~10%
The pale thrush (Turdus pallidus) is a passerine bird of the eastern Palearctic belonging to the genus Turdus in the thrush family Turdidae. It is closely related to the eye-browed thrush and grey-backed thrush. The pale thrush was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the thrushes in the genus Turdus and coined the binomial name Turdus pallidus. The scientific name comes from Latin Turdus meaning "thrush" and pallidus meaning "pallid" or "pale". Gmelin based his account on the "Pale thrush" that had been described in 1783 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his multi-volume work A General Synopsis of Birds. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.
It is 23 cm long. The feet are pale pinkish-brown and the bill is grey above and yellow below. The male is brown above with a blue-grey head and throat. The underparts are pale brown, darker on the flanks and whitish on the belly and undertail-coverts. The flight feathers of the wing are dark grey and the underwing-coverts are grey or white. The tail is dark... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Taroko National Park | 🇹🇼 Taiwan |
More parks will be added in future updates.
| # | Zoo / Centre | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ueno Zoo | 🇯🇵 Japan | |
| 2 | Ueno Zoological Gardens (West Garden) | 🇯🇵 Japan |
Rare
Under 5% of wildlife watchers report a Pale Thrush sighting in Hong Kong on a given day, based on 30 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 130th most-seen of the 204 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to under 5%, and over a week to about 10%, if each day is a fresh chance.
January
In that month about 10% of wildlife watchers report a Pale Thrush in Hong Kong on a given day, against under 5% in February to December, the lowest months. That is one of Hong Kong's driest months, with about 35 mm of rain against 280 mm in June.
Between 8 and 11 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Pale Thrush sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
24th of 26
Of the 26 cities where we can rate Pale Thrush sightings, Hong Kong ranks 24th at under 5%. The best odds are in Fukuoka (Japan, about 40%), Shanghai (China, about 30%) and Fuzhou (China, about 20%).
Same genus: Turdus
The closest relatives of the Pale Thrush that you can see in Hong Kong (genus Turdus, Typical Thrushes) are Grey-backed Thrush (about 10%), Japanese Thrush (about 10%) and Chinese Blackbird (about 10%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Pale Thrush is recorded against all the birds logged in Hong Kong (30 verified sightings), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
