The Amami thrush (''Zoothera major'') is a member of the thrush family Turdidae. It is endemic to the islands of

Amami Ōshima , also known as Amami, is the largest island in the Amami Islands, Amami archipelago between Kyūshū and Okinawa Prefecture, Okinawa. It is one of the Satsunan Islands, all of which belong to Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. The island, 712.35 ...

and Kakeroma island in the northern

Nansei Islands The , also known as the or the , are a chain of Japanese islands that stretch southwest from Kyushu to Taiwan: the Ryukyu Islands are divided into the Satsunan Islands ( Ōsumi, Tokara and Amami) and Okinawa Prefecture ( Daitō, Miyako, Y ...

of Japan.

Description

This large, heavily patterned thrush is similar in appearance to the

scaly thrush The scaly thrush (''Zoothera dauma'') is a member of the thrush family Turdidae. Distribution and habitat It breeds in wet coniferous taiga, mainly in the Himalayas through Malaysia. Description The sexes are similar, 27–31 cm long, wi ...

, to which was considered a subspecies. It has warm olive-brown to buff upperparts and whitish underparts with heavy black scaling. It has twelve tail

feather Feathers are epidermal growths that form a distinctive outer covering, or plumage, on both avian (bird) and some non-avian dinosaurs and other archosaurs. They are the most complex integumentary structures found in vertebrates and an exa ...

s. The scaly thrush is smaller and has fourteen tail feathers. It has a cheerful song similar to the Siberian thrush. The Amami thrush ranges in length from and weighs approximately . Among standard measurements, the wing chord is , the bill is and the tarsus is .Peter Clement (2001) ''Thrushes''. Princeton University Press.

Behaviour and ecology

Its breeding

habitat In ecology, habitat refers to the array of resources, biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species' habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ...

is mature subtropical broadleaved

evergreen In botany, an evergreen is a plant which has Leaf, foliage that remains green and functional throughout the year. This contrasts with deciduous plants, which lose their foliage completely during the winter or dry season. Consisting of many diffe ...

forest around humid valleys. Its diet includes

invertebrate Invertebrates are animals that neither develop nor retain a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''spine'' or ''backbone''), which evolved from the notochord. It is a paraphyletic grouping including all animals excluding the chordata, chordate s ...

s and

fruit In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants (angiosperms) that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which angiosperms disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in particular have long propaga ...

. It breeds in May and June, laying 3-4

egg An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the ...

Status

The breeding population is estimated by Amami Ornithologists' Club (NPO, Japan) all over the island every late March since 1999.

References

External links

BirdLife Species Factsheet
Birds described in 1905 Birds of the Ryukyu Islands Endemic birds of Japan Zoothera {{Turdidae-stub