Club des ornithologues de l'Outaouais

Bonjour à tous,

I just had a lovely encounter with this thrush, and am fairly certain it is a Gray-cheeked? Uniformly grey-brown body (no contrast on the tail), and no obvious buffy spectacles like a Swainson's?
It would be my first of this species, and I want to make sure I'm not getting carried away!

Merci beaucoup,
Amy

That would certainly be what I would say, a grey-cheecked trush.

Merci! Hooray.
Now if only it strays 10 ft further north so I can add it to my garden list!
Many thanks.

Well, I am by no means an authority on bird identification !!!! I am curious to see what others have to say. I am second-guessing myself now!!!!

One thing that 'bothers' me a bit with the photos is is find the bird to be quite a bit on the 'reddish' side. So could we absolutely rule out a veery? What you saw in person might be a bit different from the photo. Was the bird really more brown/grey rather than 'reddish' / cinnamon-brown ? Also from what I see I am not 100% convinced that the patterns (spots) on the throat and breast are completely incompatible with a veery. I have seen photos of veery with slightly a stronger spots on the chest and breast i.e similar to what we can see on the photos.

Yes, the lighting was tricky and my photography skills definitely didn't help! Definitely too grey for a Veery, it was a definite choice between Swainson's and Grey-cheeked for me.

Took two hours, but just seen it again from home.....maybe I should buy a lottery ticket too!

So we can eliminate the following thrushes for sure: hermit and Swainson and wood thrushes. The eye-ring on a Swainson would be apparent - there is none here.

So we're left with Veery, Grey-cheeked or very very rare a Bicknell's. The later two would be very difficult to separate and in any case, that would be a great find! The rendering of colors on photos can be tricky... If you're confident that it is more grey than 'reddish' then I would say, you should be happy!

That's pretty much the logic I followed too, though viewing it in person I discounted Veery, Hermit and Wood all based on colour. I just double checked with my non-birder partner who was with me and he described it as grey too. He's pretty familiar with both hermit and veery as the more common options here.
I assume separating Bicknell's would need a call or song? Very unlikely as you say.

I'm pretty happy, and grateful for the discussion too.