Mountain thrush, previously Mountain robin, courtesy of Richard Garrigues

Watch out for the Mountain thrush (Turdus plebejus) in our area at this time of year. I have commented before on my own tendency not to look carefully at Costa Rica’s national bird, the yigüirro (Clay-colored thrush (Turdus grayi), simply because it is so numerous. Four of the species of the Turdidae are still listed as robins in Garrigues and Dean’s The Birds of Costa Rica (2007 edition) but all of them have now been renamed, more correctly, thrushes. 

Yesterday, at least one individual in a small flock of yigüirros was a Mountain thrush. It’s not that they are hard to distinguish. The Mountain thrush is definitely more grey in colour, rather than brown, and while different lighting situations may blur this distinction, a good look at the bill colour (black for plebejus) is always a clincher. The following photo, taken here in my garden in San Antonio, shows the clear differences.

This bird had a brush with our windows but soon made a full recovery

The Mountain thrush, as its name indicates, prefers higher elevations, but it moves down-slope after breeding and so it is at this time of the year that it’s likely to show up on my home patch.

There are two other thrush species that ought to be here in our area, the White-throated thrush (Turdus assimilis) and the Pale-vented thrush (Turdus obsoletus). I have identified neither of these mid-elevation species in the Turrialba area in these seven years in Costa Rica.  Have I simply overlooked them? They do not appear on the CATIE checklist but are noted both for Espino Blanco (very close to here) and for the Rancho Naturalista at Tuis. In the latter location, they are rare species, while there is no indication of their frequency at Espino Blanco.

While I am on the look-out for the first migrant warblers, which theoretically can arrive in mid-August, I will be sure to inspect all yigüirros even more carefully.

For those who like lists, here are my home-patch species for this week:

1. Gray-headed chachalaca
2. Black vulture
3. Turkey vulture
4. Roadside hawk
5. Red-billed pigeon
6. White-tipped dove
7. Crimson-fronted parakeet
8. White-crowned parrot
9. Groove-billed ani
10. Bare-shanked screech-owl
11. Tropical screech-owl
12. Violet sabrewing
13. White-necked jacobin
14. Rufous-tailed hummingbird
15. Green-breasted mango
16. Keel-billed toucan
17. Streak-headed woodcreeper
18. Paltry tyrannulet
19. Yellow-bellied elaenia
20. Common tody-flycatcher
21. Great kiskadee
22. Social flycatcher
23. Gray-capped flycatcher
24. Tropical kingbird
25. Brown jay
26. Blue-and-white swallow
27. Plain wren
28. House wren
29. Orange-billed nightingale-thrush
30. Mountain thrush
31. Clay-colored thrush
32. Tropical parula
33. Bananaquit
34. Passerini’s tanager
35. Golden-hooded tanager
36. Blue-gray tanager
37. Palm tanager
38. Variable seedeater
39. Yellow-faced grassquit
40. Black-striped sparrow
41. Rufous-collared sparrow
42. Buff-throated saltator
43. Black-headed saltator
44. Melodious blackbird
45. Great-tailed grackle
46. Montezuma oropendola