EYEBROWED THRUSH Turdus obscurus Gmelin, 1789

Accepted: 1 (20%)	Treated in Appendix H: no
Not accepted: 4	CBRC review: all records
Not submitted/reviewed: 0	Color image: none

This Old World thrush breeds from northern Siberia and Kamchatka south to northern Mongolia, Sakhalin Island, and the Kuril Islands. Breeding in Japan is suspected but unproven (Brazil 1991, cf. AOU 1998). The species winters from India east to southeastern China and Taiwan, and south to Palau, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Spring vagrants occur rarely but regularly in the western Aleutian Islands and casually among the central Aleutians, the Pribilofs, St. Lawrence Island, and northern Alaska. Fall vagrants occur casually in the western Aleutians, the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, and western Europe.

A male Eyebrowed Thrush photographed on 28 May 2001 at Galileo Hill, Kern County, came as a particular surprise—any prognosticator would have looked for this species to show up at a coastal location in fall, consistent with most other California records of Siberian vagrants. Presumably, this bird wintered in the New World. The CBRC has not endorsed four winter reports. Observers should take care to eliminate an atypical American Robin, particularly of the western subspecies propinquus, which is relatively dull and often possesses a distinct superciliary.

 

[FIELDFARE Turdus pilaris Linnaeus, 1758 – see hypothetical section]