Song thrush "thrush." Mavis (Μαβής) can also mean "purple" in Greek. A recent molecular study indicates that the song thrush's closest relatives are the similarly plumaged mistle thrush ("T. viscivorus") and Chinese thrush ("T. mupinensis"); these three species are early offshoots from the lineage of "Turdus" thrushes before they diversified and spread across the globe, and hence are less closely related to other European thrush species such as the blackbird ("T. merula"). The song thrush has three subspecies, with the nominate subspecies, "T. p. philomelos", covering the majority of the species' range. "T. p. hebridensis", described by British ornithologist William Eagle Clarke
Song thrush each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture! The song also inspired the nineteenth-century British writer Thomas Hardy, who spoke in "Darkling Thrush" of the bird's "full-hearted song evensong/Of joy illimited", but twentieth-century British poet Ted Hughes in "Thrushes" concentrated on its hunting prowess: "Nothing but bounce and/stab/and a ravening second". Nineteenth-century Welsh poet Edward Thomas wrote 15 poems concerning blackbirds or thrushes, including "The Thrush": I hear the thrush, and I see Him alone at the end of the lane Near the bare poplar's tip, Singing continuously. In "The Tables