Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustelina)
Photo by Juan Zamora
Cowbird nestlings may outcompete Wood Thrush nestlings, reducing their survival chances. Photo by Kelly Colgan Azar
The Wood Thrush is slightly smaller than its cousin, the American Robin, It is cinnamon brown on its head and back, and white with prominent black spots on its underside. Most notable is its ee-oh-lay song, with a beautiful, haunting, flutelike quality that echoes through the forested interiors that it prefers.
The Wood Thrush is a Neotropical migrant that flies across the Gulf of Mexico from the Yucatan each spring to breed in Appalachian and Mid-Atlantic forests, then follows a more easterly route to return each fall.
Wood Thrush breed in the understory of woodlands with tall trees. They nest most successfully in large, contiguous tracts of undisturbed forest, but will also nest in suburban woodlots and city parks with tall trees, though are less successful there.
Destruction and fragmentation of forests in both breeding and wintering areas contribute to the species' declining abundance.
Wood thrush is a bird of forest interiors. But after we built our roads and housing developments and shopping malls, there isn’t much forest interior left, so it nests out closer to forest edges.
That makes Wood thrush nests vulnerable to brood parasitism by Brown-headed cowbirds, another native species. It is a brood parasite—it lays its eggs in the nests of other species of birds, including wood thrush.
Cowbirds are a bird of edges, at the boundary between forest and field. As humans have fragmented the forests, cowbirds have expanded, and their parasitism is one cause of declines in wood thrush populations.
Wood thrush parents seem not to recognize that the cowbird nestlings are not theirs, and they feed them. Often cowbird eggs and chicks are bigger, hatch earlier, and outcompete the wood thrush nestlings, which are less likely to survive The Wood Thrush uses different levels of the forest—usually nesting in the lower branches of a sapling or shrub, where a fork provides good support and twigs or foliage provide shade and cover.
Wood Thrushes forage in the leaf litter on the ground, tossing the leaves aside to search for prey. They feed mostly on leaf-litter invertebrates. In late summer and fall, they shift their diet toward fruits (particularly fatty fruits) to prepare for the demands of migration—native fruits such as spicebush, fox grape, blueberry, holly, elderberry, jack-in-the-pulpit, Virginia creeper, pokeweed, dogwood, black cherry, black gum, and poison ivy.
Ideal Wood Thrush habitat includes trees over 50 feet tall, a moderate understory of saplings and shrubs, an open forest floor with moist soil and decaying leaf litter, and water nearby.
| What Wood Thrush Need | How Can We Help |
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| Food and Water: Wood Thrushes feed mostly on leaf-litter invertebrates. In fall, they switch to native fruits and berries with high lipid content to store up energy for their long migration to wintering grounds in Central America. |
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| Shelter: Wood Thrushes are birds of forest interiors. |
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| Nesting: Wood Thrush breed in the understory of woodlands with tall trees. They nest most successfully in large, contiguous tracts of undisturbed forest. They will also next in suburban woodlots and city parks with tall trees, although they are less successful there. |
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| Other Threats: Wood Thrush face threats from the loss of forested habitat in both their breeding grounds in the eastern United States and wintering grounds in Central America.
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Where to See Model Habitat and Observation Sites:
Prince William Forest Park and Meadowood Recreation Area
Check out Woodthrush observations near you:
Find sightings using eBird Data Narrow the view by entering your county in the “DATA FOR:” filter