Brown Birds With White Spots

Bird spotting is a widely practised hobby all over the globe today and has been for decades. There is nothing more satisfying than being able to correctly identify all the birds you see flying around your garden or when you’re out for a walk.

Brown Birds With White Spots

In order to do this, however, you’ll need some knowledge on specific bird types!

Brown birds with white spots are common in most parts of the world! There are so many varieties of birds with this colouring that it can feel like an almost impossible task to tell them apart, so hopefully you’ll be able to identify the individual species with this helpful guide. 

Young European Starling

Young European Starling

The common starling, sometimes referred to as the European starling, is a bird that is quite often seen in your everyday garden.

While adult European starlings are mostly black, young birds are brown with white speckles during their first months. Then they gradually turn black as they complete their first molt.

Starlings are chunky and some would say ‘black bird sized’ but with short tails and long, slender beaks. In flight their wings are short and pointed, making them look rather like small, four-pointed stars (thus giving them their name).

At a distance, adult starlings look black. In summer they are purplish-green iridescent with yellow beaks; in fresh winter plumage they are brown, covered in brilliant white spots.

Starlings are known for being boisterous, loud, and they travel in large groups (often with blackbirds and grackles).

They race across fields, break down and probe the grass for food; or they sit high on wires or trees making a constant stream of rattles, whirrs, and whistles.

Starlings are common in most towns, suburbs, and countryside near human settlements. They feed on the ground on lawns, fields, sidewalks, and parking lots. They perch and roost high on wires, trees, and buildings as this is where they feel most at home. 

The Brown Thrasher

The Brown Thrasher

It can be quite difficult to get a glimpse of a Brown Thrasher as they tend to nest in very dense shrubbery but once you do, you’ll realise what a boldly patterned and interesting bird the Brown Thrasher really is!

Brown Thrashers wear a somewhat severe expression thanks to their heavy, slightly down curved bill and staring yellow eyes, and they are the only thrasher species east of Texas.

Brown Thrashers are exuberant singers, with one of the largest repertoires of any North American songbird. 

Brown Thrashers may come to backyards if they are offered some food. Often, they will visit feeders or the ground below to pick up fallen seed. There is a better chance they will visit if dense cover is close by. You can also attract them by planting shrubs that produce berries

To find Brown Thrashers, keep your eyes and ears alert around tangled thickets, hedgerows or forest edges in central and eastern North America.

Brown Thrashers are secretive, and can be incredibly hard to spot in their favourite haunts under dense vegetation, but they can make a lot of noise as they rummage through the leaf litter.

During spring and early summer, males will usually climb a little higher to sing from exposed perches. Listen for a song with a pattern of a Northern Mockingbird, but with phrases repeated only in pairs rather than in triplets.

The House Sparrow

The House Sparrow

Though they are from the same family,House Sparrows aren’t related to other North American sparrows, and they’re differently shaped.

House Sparrows are usually chunkier, fuller in the chest, with a larger, rounded head, shorter tail, and stouter bill than most American sparrows.

You will find that most Male House Sparrows are brightly colored birds with grey heads, white cheeks, a black bib, and rufous neck – although in cities you may see some that are dull and grubby.

Females are a plain buffy-brown overall with dingy grey-brown underparts. Their backs are noticeably striped with buff, black, and brown.

House Sparrows are noisy little sparrows that flutter down from eaves and fencerows to hop and peck at crumbs or birdseed.

Look for them fluttering in and out of nest holes hidden behind shop signs or in traffic lights, or hanging around parking lots waiting for crumbs and picking insects off car grills.They are very common birds and can be easily spotted.

The Wood Thrush

The Wood Thrush

In most cases you’ll likely hear the Wood Thrush before you see it. The male sings his haunting but beautiful flute-like ee-oh-lay song from the lower canopy of mixed eastern forests.

To see Wood Thrushes, look for them foraging quietly on the forest floor and digging through leaf litter. They are perfect little scavenger birds and make the most of any litter nearby. 

A songbird like the Wood Thrush needs 10 to 15 times as much calcium to lay eggs of a similar size mammal needs to nurture its young at the same stage.

This makes calcium-rich food supplements like snail shells crucial to successful breeding. These essential nutrients are found in soils subject to acid rain, which may help explain patterns of population decline in the Wood Thrush.

The Mistle Thrush

The Mistle Thrush

Despite being from the same family, The mistle thrush is a much larger songbird, commonly found in parks, gardens, woodland and scrub. It probably gets its common name from its love of mistletoe,it enjoys the sticky berries.

In turn, it helps mistletoe to thrive by accidentally ‘planting’ its seeds while wiping its bill on the tree bark to remove the sticky residue; it also disperses the seeds in its droppings.

The mistle thrush is pale greyish-brown above, with a white belly covered in round, black and white spots. It is larger and greyer than the similar-looking Song or Wood Thrush.

The mistle thrush is also commonly known as the ‘Rain Bird’ as it can be heard often singing loudly from the tops of high trees after heavy spring rains.

The Distribution of these classic little birds is Widespread, but absent from the highest uplands and some Scottish isles.