- Allenia fusca
Identification
9 in (23cm) brown upperparts, white underparts with grayish-brown heavy scaling from throat to belly; one whitish wing bar and white tip to one tertial; black bill; yellow-brown eye; white-tipped tail.
Most difficult to distinguish from the Pearly-eyed Thrasher which has a longer, light-colored bill, white iris, a different pattern to the breast, and is larger.
Distribution
Caribbean - Lesser Antilles: fairly common resident from Saba and St Bartholomew south to St. Vincent. Rare and local in Grenada and possibly extirpated on St. Eustatius, Barbuda and Barbados. These islands comprise the entire range.
Taxonomy
It seems that this species, the Pearly-eyed Thrasher and the Tremblers (Brown Trembler and Grey Trembler) together constitute a group that originated within the Lesser Antilles.
This species was traditionally placed in the genus Margarops.
Five different subspecies share the range for this species:
- A. f. atlantica
- A. f. hypenema
- A. f. schwartzi
- A. f. vincenti
- A. f. fusca
Habitat
Moist and semi-arid forests and woodlands.
Behaviour
Voice: repeated phrases similar to Tropical Mockingbird, but with less vigor. An alternative description is that the bird alternates between a short, nice sounding, thrush-like sound and an unpleasant sound like a cork on a glass pane.
References
- Clements, J. F., P. C. Rasmussen, T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, T. A. Fredericks, J. A. Gerbracht, D. Lepage, A. Spencer, S. M. Billerman, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2023. The eBird/Clements checklist of Birds of the World: v2023. Downloaded from https://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
- Raffaele et al. 1998. Birds of the West Indies. Christopher Helm, London. ISBN 0713649054
Recommended Citation
- BirdForum Opus contributors. (2024) Scaly-breasted Thrasher. In: BirdForum, the forum for wild birds and birding. Retrieved 25 April 2024 from https://www.birdforum.net/opus/Scaly-breasted_Thrasher
External Links
GSearch checked for 2020 platform.1
