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Gray-cheeked Thrush

Status Uncommon transient, rare in summer. Breeds. First spring sightings are in late April or early May (average 10 May, earliest 25 April), but birds are still moving through in early June, with reports from Sable Island to mid-June. It was discovered nesting on Seal Island during the nineteenth century (Langille 1884) and in 1922 was still common there and at Cape Forchu, Yarmouth County, and other islands and headlands along the coast (R.W. Tufts). By 1938 it had disappeared from Seal Island (R.W. Tufts), but a bird found in mid-July 1983 (I.A. McLaren) suggests that it still nests there and perhaps elsewhere along the Southwestern Shore.

It probably summers with greater frequency on Cape Breton Island than elsewhere in the province. James Bond found it there on 6 July 1949 on French Mountain, Inverness County, and J.E. Victor Goodwill found two on Kidston Island, off Baddeck, on 4 August 1946, and another on the same small island on 21 June 1947. There have been a few more recent sightings from the Cape Breton highlands. A major movement was reported on Brier Island on 6 September 1971, and a number were seen there and at several locations on Cape Breton Island on 22-24 September 1978. Otherwise, autumn reports are generally of ones or twos, the latest in October or November (average 29 October, latest 24 November 1960 at a feeder near Yarmouth).

Description Length: 16.5-19 cm. Adults: Entire upperparts olive-gray to gray; sides of head lighter gray; throat and belly white; breast may be tinged with buff, with small, wedge-shaped blackish dots; sides gray or brownish gray; eye ring pale gray and rather indistinct.

Breeding Nest: Like that of Swainson's Thrush but bulkier, much decayed wood being used in the framework and considerably more beard lichen being added. The location of nests is also similar, but those of the Gray-cheeked Thrush are much better concealed; whether this is by design or the result of the thicker, dwarfed and stunted tree growth in which it is placed, is open to question. The nests are lined with fine, soft dead grass and usually placed about a metre from the ground.

Eggs: 3-4, usually 3; similar to those of Swainson's Thrush but slightly greener and more speckled than blotched. Laying begins about the end of the first week in June. Five nests discovered on Seal Island are the only ones for which I have data. Three of these were found by Harold F. Tufts, two on 13 June and one on 14 June 1907, all of which contained complete sets of three fresh eggs. I found the other two, one on 19 June 1922 which contained four newly hatched young, and the other on 23 June 1922 which held two young, a few days hatched, and one infertile egg. The construction of all these nests was strikingly similar; all were very bulky, apparently designed to protect the young from the cold and dampness which prevails on Seal Island even in summer. They were situated at heights of 50 cm to 7 m. Three were in low stunted spruces close to the trunks and extremely well hidden by luxuriant beard lichen on all sides. An exceptionally placed nest was about 7 m up in the very thick top of a spruce. The fifth was saddled on the trunk of a fallen spruce, hidden by the moss-grown broken branches and about 50 cm from the ground.

Range Breeds north to the limit of trees from northeastern Siberia, Alaska and across Canada to northern Labrador and Newfoundland, south to New York State in the mountains, northern Ontario, northern Manitoba and northern British Columbia. Winters in the West Indies and South America.

Remarks Why these fragile creatures choose such bleak and inhospitable surroundings to raise their young is hard to comprehend. During June 1922, I was stranded on Seal Island through eight days of rain and continuous fog. There was not a moment of sunshine and the Atlantic air was chill and damp, but the birds seemed not to mind it in the least. The clear, sweet calls of the thrushes and the monotonous trills of the ubiquitous Blackpoll Warblers could be heard on all sides, even when it was raining.

Birds nesting in southwestern Nova Scotia and probably elsewhere in the province are of the small, browner subspecies Catharus minimus bicknelli, which also nests near the tree line in New England's mountains. The subspecies Catharus minimus minimus of Newfoundland and Catharus minimus aliciae of northern Canada presumably migrate through the province, and very gray individuals photographed on Sable Island probably belong to one of these two forms.