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
Varied thrush Varied thrush The varied thrush ("Ixoreus naevius") is a member of the thrush family, Turdidae. The German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin described the varied thrush in 1789. Four subspecies are recognised: The genus name "Ixoreus" comes from the Ancient Greek "ixos", "mistletoe". This was a synonym of a former name for the mockingbird genus, "Mimus"; the genus creator Bonaparte assumed wrongly that, because Swainson had shown a mockingbird and this thrush on the same plate of his book, they were related. The specific "naevius" is Latin for "spotted" from "naevus", " spot". The varied thrush is a fairly large thrush