Is the song of a song thrush to be enjoyed?
The answer may depend on how close to your bedroom window one is singing, and how long before sunrise it began.
Song thrushes are loud, persistent performers. The variety for which they are famed makes them absorbing to listen to. It can also be quite confusing.
The key to identifying them by song is the way they repeat a note or a short phrase several times, before switching to something else and repeating that instead.
It’s as if the bird:
discovers a new sound
excitedly practises it
gets bored
tries something else
Not all song thrushes do this as obviously as in this recording, but none of them can resist that repeat-and-switch, and it tends to give them away at some stage.
The volume and variety mean that in the spring their song is sometimes mistaken for the much scarcer nightingale, but song thrushes don’t leave quite such dramatic pauses and they sing for much of the year, not just April and May.
They are also much more likely to be singing at ‘thrush height’ - near the top of a tree, rather than buried in the undergrowth.
Song thrushes can often be heard on a still winter’s day, and become especially persistent early in the New Year. That’s a good time to get to know them - before their variety show gets mixed up with so many other new sounds in the gathering chorus.
Another rather subtler song thrush sound is the one they make when smashing up snails.
Few birds bother trying to break into a large, hard-shelled garden snail, but song thrushes have mastered the art of it.
A favourite snail-smashing spot will feature a stone, a tree root or a patio slab, against which the thrush will repeatedly hit the snail with a flick of its upper body.
If you’re not there to witness the action, you may witness the aftermath, of scattered, broken shell.
Though it’s tempting to say that song thrushes love doing this, it may be better understood as a tactic for harder times.
Snail-smashing tends to happen in late winter and dry summer periods, when song thrushes’ favoured foods such as worms and berries are tougher to find.
The number of song thrushes in the UK declined by around half between the 1960s and 1980s. However, they are still widely distributed, and can be found in most woodlands, and in many large gardens, parks and wooded countryside areas.
During the first lockdown in April 2020, the arrival of a song thrush in our neighbour’s garden was cause for much excitement, and a video from the bedroom window.
Around here that song is welcome anytime.
Next week: Blackbird
Posts from previous years now repeat themselves, a bit like a song thrush.
This is the third instalment in 2025’s cycle of Shriek of the Week. You can catch up with Robin, which includes details about how all this works, and last week’s edition on the Wren.
For those in a position to do so, taking out a paid subscription to Shriek of the Week supports me to write more and improve what I do. It also gets you an invite to our livestream-hopping Early Bird Club call (see below) and discounts to some in-person events in the UK.
To all those who have supported Shriek of the Week over the past year: thank you!
📺 Live streaming birds - updated!
In 2023 we published a list of live video feeds, where you can see and hear wild birds doing their thing in a variety of locations across the world.
Over the past year our monthly Early Bird Club visits have turned up more of these awesome portals, while some have disappeared. We’ve now updated the original list for 2025.
It’s amazing how much you can see across these feeds in an hour. In our first club of 2025, we managed 32 different species, and we’re going to see how many we can find by the end of the year. Here’s our tally so far.
All these feeds are free to access (though you will have to endure the occasional advert for frying pans and Candy Crush game clones on some).
If you’d like to join a small group of us watching together, paying Shriek of the Week subscribers can join the Early Bird Club Zoom call on the first Saturday of every month (8-9am UK time).
🐦⬛ Other ways to find birds with Birdsong Academy this spring
Join an in-the-flesh early morning walkshop in London or Brighton in March
Explore the A-Z archive
Media credits:
Song Thrush song recorded in Dyfed, Wales in October 1992 by Richard Margoschis and distributed by the British Library reference: W TURDUS PHILOMELOS R12 C5 under Creative Commons licence CC BY 3.0
Song thrush image by ntrief on Pixabay
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