Brown-headed Thrush

Brown-headed Thrush (Turdus chrysolaus) is a medium thrush whose male has a brown head, darker back and orange-brown breast and flanks, while females are duller. Body shape, bill structure, plumage pattern and voice provide the strongest field characters. Age, sex and season may alter its appearance, so identification should combine several features and careful direct field comparisons with similar species in the same habitat (Wikipedia, general species account).

It breeds in Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands and East Asia in temperate forest, forages for invertebrates and fruit and winters south through the Ryukyus to Taiwan and the northern Philippines. Its movements and social behaviour vary through the year, with breeding birds generally more dispersed and non-breeding birds gathering where food is concentrated. The Korean vertebrate catalogue used for this guide records the species in South Korea (Wikipedia, general species account; Wildlife of Korea occurrence records).