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
True thrush genus "Turdus": True thrush True thrushes are medium-sized mostly insectivorous or omnivorous birds in the genus Turdus of the wider thrush family, Turdidae. The genus name "Turdus" is Latin for "thrush". The term "thrush" is used for many other birds of the family Turdidae as well as for a number of species belonging to several other families (see Thrush). The genus has a cosmopolitan distribution, with species in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. Several species have also colonised some oceanic islands, and two species have been introduced to New Zealand. Some New World species are called robins, the