Taita Thrush (Turdus helleri)
About the Taita Thrush
The Taita thrush (Turdus helleri), also known as the Taita olive thrush or Heller's ground thrush, is an endangered bird in the thrush family Turdidae, endemic to the Taita Hills in southern Kenya. The Taita thrush was previously classified as subspecies of the olive thrush (Turdus olivaceus), but it is now treated as distinct species. It reaches a length between 20 and 22 centimetres. The head and upperparts are dark grey-brown to black, the breast is grey, the underparts are white, and the flanks are rufous-red. The eye is dark with a narrow yellow or orange eye-ring, and the bill and legs are bright orange. It was named after the zoologist Edmund Heller (1875–1939), a workmate of the American ornithologist Edgar Alexander Mearns (1856–1916) who first described this species in 1913.
No audio on this page yet
We only publish recordings we may use commercially, because this site is supported by ads. xeno-canto lists 14 recordings for this species: 12 CC BY-NC-ND · 2 CC BY-NC-SA. None of them permits commercial use, so there is no player here — the page is kept as a profile so the bird is not missing from the guide.
As soon as someone uploads a freely licensed recording, we mirror it and the player appears here.
Listed as recorded in Kenya in the xeno-canto catalogue.
Related species you can hear
- Abyssinian ThrushTurdus abyssinicusrecording
- American RobinTurdus migratoriusrecording
- Andean Slaty ThrushTurdus nigricepsrecording
- Austral ThrushTurdus falcklandiirecording
- Black-billed ThrushTurdus ignobilisrecording
- Chestnut-bellied ThrushTurdus fulviventrisrecording
This species has no recording here yet — these relatives do, so you can hear what the family sounds like.