Family: Turdidae, Thrushes view all from this family

Description 8" (20 cm). Starling-sized. Brown above, bright rusty color on head, and white below with large blackish spots. Other brown thrushes have finer spotting on breast.

Habitat Moist, deciduous woodlands with a thick understory; also well-planted parks and gardens.

Nesting 4 greenish-blue eggs in a cup of grass and twigs, reinforced with mud and lined with fine grass and rootlets, placed in a bush or sapling.

Range Breeds from Manitoba, Ontario, and Nova Scotia south to Florida and Gulf of Mexico. Winters in tropics.

Voice   A series of rich, melodious, flute-like phrases; call a sharp pit-pit-pit-pit.

Discussion In the East, this is the most familiar of our spotted brown thrushes, and the only one that nests regularly in the vicinity of houses. The Wood Thrush has one of the most beautiful songs of any North American bird. Thoreau wrote of it: "Whenever a man hears it he is young, and Nature is in her spring; wherever he hears it, it is a new world and a free country, and the gates of heaven are not shut against him."