The thrushes are a passerine bird family, Turdidae, with a worldwide distribution. The family was once much larger before biologists reclassified the former subfamily Saxicolinae, which includes the chats and European robins, as Old World flycatchers. Thrushes are small to medium-sized ground living birds that feed on insects, other invertebrates and fruit. Some unrelated species around the world have been named after thrushes due to their similarity to birds in this family.
The Old World flycatchers are a large family, the Muscicapidae, of small passerine birds restricted to the Old World, with the exception of several vagrants and two species, bluethroat and northern wheatear, found also in North America. These are mainly small arboreal insectivores, many of which, as the name implies, take their prey on the wing. The family is relatively large and includes 351 species which are divided into 54 genera.
True thrushes are medium-sized mostly insectivorous or omnivorous birds in the genus Turdus of the wider thrush family, Turdidae. The genus name Turdus is Latin for "thrush". The term "thrush" is used for many other birds of the family Turdidae as well as for a number of species belonging to several other families.
The Asian thrushes are medium-sized mostly insectivorous or omnivorous birds in the genus Zoothera of the thrush family, Turdidae.
The genus Catharus is an evolutionary clade of forest-dwelling passerine birds in the family Turdidae (thrushes), commonly known as nightingale-thrushes. The extant species are widely distributed across the Americas and are descended from a common ancestor that lived 4–6 million years ago. Most of the species are shy of humans, seldom leaving the cover of dense forest vegetation, where their activities are hidden from view. Thus, many fundamental aspects of their biology and life histories are poorly known.
The rock thrushes, Monticola, are a genus of chats, medium-sized mostly insectivorous or omnivorous songbirds. All are Old World birds, and most are associated with mountainous regions.
The scrub robins or bush chats are medium-sized insectivorous birds in the genus Cercotrichas. They were formerly considered to be in the thrush family, (Turdidae), but are more often now treated as part of the Old World flycatcher family, (Muscicapidae). They are not closely related to the Australian scrub-robins, genus Drymodes in the family Petroicidae.
The cochoas are medium-sized frugivorous, insectivorous and molluscivorous birds in the genus Cochoa. Their bright contrasting plumage patterns, sexual dimorphism and feeding habits made their systematic position difficult to ascertain in early times, Richard Bowdler Sharpe placed them with the Prionopidae in 1879 while many considered them as some kind of aberrant thrush. The genus was previously included in the Old World flycatcher family Muscicapidae but molecular phylogenetic studies have shown that it is more closely related to the thrush family Turdidae.
The forktails are small insectivorous birds in the genus Enicurus. They were formerly placed in the thrush family, Turdidae, but are now treated as part of the Old World flycatcher family, Muscicapidae. Their common name derives from their long forked tail.
The blue rock thrush is a species of chat. This thrush-like Old World flycatcher was formerly placed in the family Turdidae. It breeds in southern Europe, northwest Africa, and from Central Asia to northern China and Malaysia. The blue rock thrush is the official national bird of Malta and was shown on the Lm 1 coins that were part of the country's former currency.
The pied thrush is a member of the thrush family found in India and Sri Lanka. The males are conspicuously patterned in black and white while the females are olive brown and speckled. They breed in the central Himalayan forests and winter in the hill forests of southern India and Sri Lanka. Like many other thrushes, they forage on leaf litter below forest undergrowth and fly into trees when disturbed and sit still making them difficult to locate.
The crimson-fronted barbet, also called Sri Lanka barbet, is an Asian barbet endemic to Sri Lanka where it inhabits tropical moist lowland forests up to 1,300 m (4,300 ft) elevation.
The geomalia or Sulawesi mountain thrush is a rare member of the thrush family endemic to Sulawesi in Indonesia. It is sometimes classified as Geomalia heinrichi, in which case it is monotypic in the genus Geomalia.
The Abyssinian ground thrush is a thrush from the family Turdidae which is native to north-east Africa where it lives at high altitude in montane forests.
Cacomantis is a genus of cuckoo in the family Cuculidae. The genus name is derived from the Greek kakos meaning evil or ill-boding and mantis for prophet and is derived from their association with "rains" being supposed to be predicted as also ill fortune and bad weather. Most of them have a round nostril and are mainly in brown and gray colours. The tails are graduated and barred. The bars are transverse in sonneratii and oblique in all others.
The red-backed thrush or rusty-backed thrush is a species of bird in the family Turdidae. Traditionally, it included the red-and-black thrush as a subspecies. It is endemic to forests on Sulawesi and the nearby islands of Buton and Kabaena in Indonesia. It is becoming rare due to habitat destruction.
The orange ground thrush is a species of bird in the family Turdidae.
Psilopogon is a genus of Old World barbets that used to include only a single species, the fire-tufted barbet. Results of molecular phylogenetic analyses indicate that the genus is nested within an evolutionary branch consisting of Asian barbets that were formerly placed in the genus Megalaima proposed by George Robert Gray in 1841. Since Psilopogon was proposed by Salomon Müller already in 1835, this name takes priority.
Turdinae are a subfamily of passerine birds in the family Turdidae. They are the sister clade to the subfamily Myadestinae. The divergence between myadestines and turdines occurred 11 million years ago in the Serravallian. Within the turdines they can split into three subgroups: Zoothera occupying a basal position, the second consisting of forest thrush genera and the remaining group closer to Turdus.
The Mauritius ground thrush, Geokichla longitarsus, was a species of long-legged thrush within the Turdidae family. Endemic to Mauritius, the Mauritius ground thrush has since gone extinct, probably during the 14th century.
