Between the Christmas and New Year festivities at our cottage in Cowley near to Cheltenham I decided to head for the long staying
Black-throated Thrush at Whipsnade Zoo. The bird was first found on 11th December and has been seen on every day since feeding in a Cotoneaster tree. After leaving Cowley at around 09:15 I arrived at the zoo at just gone 11:00. I wandered directly to the birds favoured tree and was soon watching this stunning adult male bird with around 15 other birders. The Thrush showed down to around 15 meters as it devoured the berries of the Cotoneaster. On occasion the bird would move deeper into the tree and would also fly off to other parts of the zoo for short periods of time soon to return. Unfortunately, over the last few days the bird appears to have been attacked, presumably by a Sparrowhawk, and on its left side it has lost all its tertials and many of the wing coverts (see fourth image below) and there is a hole in its rump feathers, when flying the bird clearly has a large gap in its wing feathers but otherwise it appears healthy and is feeding well.
There have been 84 British records of Black-throated Thrush to the end of 2017. I have seen one in the UK previously a sub-adult male which wintered at Curload, Stoke St Gregory present from 24th December 2005 to 6th January 2006.
My ebird list for the morning can be viewed
here.
Black-throated Thursh - Whipsnade Zoo, Bedfordshire
Black-throated Thursh - Whipsnade Zoo, Bedfordshire
Black-throated Thursh - Whipsnade Zoo, Bedfordshire
Black-throated Thursh - Whipsnade Zoo, Bedfordshire
Black-throated Thursh - Whipsnade Zoo, Bedfordshire
