Mistle Thrush or Song Thrush? How to Tell Them Apart

How to tell a Song Thrush from a Mistle Thrush, with photos. For each bird in full, see Song Thrush and Mistle Thrush.

A Mistle Thrush is bigger and greyer, with no warm brown tones and very heavy dark spots.¹ It stands boldly upright.² A Song Thrush is smaller and warm brown, with spots like upside-down hearts on a creamy breast³ washed with buff.⁴

If one flies, look under the wing: white on a Mistle Thrush, warm yellowish-buff on a Song Thrush. A Mistle Thrush also shows white on the tips and outer edges of the tail.⁵

The Mistle Thrush is the UK's largest thrush.⁶ It is 27 to 28 cm long, against 20 to 23 cm for a Song Thrush, and BTO ringers' records put it at about 126 g on average, against about 75 g.⁷ A Mistle Thrush is bigger than a Blackbird; a Song Thrush is a little smaller.⁸

A Mistle Thrush is also long-tailed, stands tall and moves across open ground in bounds. A Song Thrush feeds close to cover.

Song Thrush: warm brown above. Below, a creamy breast with a buff wash, and dark spots shaped like upside-down hearts, fairly evenly spread.

Mistle Thrush: cold greyish-brown above, with narrow whitish wing bars. Below, whiter, with large, heavy black spots, more prominent towards the belly. An old Northamptonshire name for it, "marble thrush", came from its round spots.⁹

Look under the wing: white on a Mistle Thrush, warm yellowish-buff on a Song Thrush. A Mistle Thrush's longer tail has white tips and white on the outer edges, and it often gives its rattling call in flight.

A Song Thrush usually repeats each phrase two or three times before moving on. A Mistle Thrush sings short, loud, mellow phrases with clear pauses between them, in a less varied song; the RSPB likens it to a cross between a Blackbird and a Song Thrush. It often sings in wind and rain, which earned it the old name stormcock.

The calls are easier still. A Mistle Thrush gives a loud rattle, often in flight. A Song Thrush's call is a short "tsip" (the RSPB writes it "tsit").

Both eat earthworms and other small animals and, in autumn and winter, berries. Song Thrushes smash snails open on a stone anvil. In winter a Mistle Thrush often guards a holly or rowan full of berries, chasing off Blackbirds and Redwings. In Britain, Mistle Thrushes form roving flocks as early as July.

A Mistle Thrush builds a large cup bound with mud and lined with fine grass, usually 2 to 10 m up in the fork of a tree. A Song Thrush nests in a bush, hedge, tree or creeper, and its cup is lined inside with smooth, hard mud. Song Thrush eggs are glossy blue with blackish spots; a Mistle Thrush's are paler, from light blue to greenish, marked with reddish-brown and purple.

Young birds of both species have buff streaks on the back. A young Mistle Thrush is still the bigger, paler bird.

The Song Thrush, by far. The UK had about 1.3 million Song Thrush territories in 2016, against about 165,000 for the Mistle Thrush: roughly eight Song Thrush territories for every Mistle Thrush territory.

Their fortunes have also parted. Song Thrush numbers rose 37% between 1995 and 2024, while Mistle Thrush numbers fell 40%.¹⁰ The Mistle Thrush is on the UK Red List; the Song Thrush is Amber.¹¹

A female or young Blackbird can have a spotted or streaky breast, but it is deep brown all over and bigger than a Song Thrush. A Redwing, a winter visitor, is about Song Thrush size but has a bright white stripe over the eye and rusty-red flanks.

1. RSPB. How to identify the UK's thrushes, including two special winter visitors. RSPB, Identifying birds. Accessed 8 October 2026. Source
2. RSPB. Mistle Thrush. RSPB Birds A-Z. Accessed 8 October 2026. Source
3. Woodland Trust. Song thrush (Turdus philomelos). Woodland Trust, Animals: birds. Accessed 8 October 2026. Source
4. Collar, N. (2020). Song Thrush (Turdus philomelos), version 1.0. Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie and E. de Juana, editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology. doi:10.2173/bow.sonthr1.01
5. Collar, N. (2020). Mistle Thrush (Turdus viscivorus), version 1.0. Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie and E. de Juana, editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology. doi:10.2173/bow.misthr1.01
6. BTO. Mistle Thrush (Turdus viscivorus). BTO BirdFacts. Accessed 8 October 2026. Source
7. BTO. Song Thrush (Turdus philomelos). BTO BirdFacts. Accessed 8 October 2026. Source
8. RSPB. Song Thrush. RSPB Birds A-Z. Accessed 8 October 2026. Source
9. Swainson, C. (1885). Provincial Names and Folk Lore of British Birds. Trübner, for the English Dialect Society, London. Accessed 8 October 2026. Source
10. Heywood, J. J. N., Massimino, D., Baker, L., Balmer, D. E. et al. (2026). The Breeding Bird Survey 2025. BTO Research Report 802. British Trust for Ornithology, Thetford. Accessed 8 October 2026. Source
11. RSPB, BTO et al. (2021). Birds of Conservation Concern 5 (leaflet). The status of all regularly occurring birds in the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. Accessed 8 October 2026. Source