Catharus minimus
Order Passeriformes
Family Turdidae
♂ Adult male .— Upper parts olive-brown; no buffy eye-ring or wash on cheek; under parts white; throat and breast spotted with black.
Nest, in scrub spruce or fir.
Eggs, greenish-blue, spotted with brown.
The Gray-cheeked Thrush is a migrant through New England and New York. Its habits and haunts are very like those of the Olive-backed Thrush [Swainson’s Thrush], and it appears at about the same time. On the higher Catskills and on the high mountains of northern New England just below the timber line, where the stunted spruce and fir grow close together, a smaller race of this thrush, known as Bicknell’s Thrush [Bicknell’s is now considered a different species], is a common summer resident.
As a migrant it sings less than the Olive-backed Thrush, but on the mountain summits its song and call-note are constantly heard, especially at dawn and at dusk. The call note is like the syllables fee’-a, sharp and petulant, often rising to a high strident note suggesting a nasal note of the Red-winged Blackbird. This call, like the Veery’s, may be much modified and subdued. The song is very similar in quality to the Veery’s, though perhaps a trifle thinner, with a marked upward inflection at the close. It may be written thus: te-dee’, dee-a, te-dee-ee, with a slurring effect on all the long syllables. On Mount Mansfield, in Vermont, the hotel is in the midst of the breeding-ground of the Bicknell’s Thrushes, and is an excellent place to observe them. Much remains to be learned about their nesting habits.
To distinguish the Gray-cheek from the Olive-back [Swainson’s Thrush], one must see the side of the head in strong light. If there is no difference in shade between the top of the head and the cheek and if there is no tawny color on head or tail, then the bird is a Gray-cheeked Thrush.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)