The Gray-cheeked Thrush is the coldest-toned and perhaps the most overlooked of the brown-backed migrant thrushes that pass through Michigan. Gray-brown above with a distinctly grayish face lacking bold "spectacles," and a spotted breast, it is a plain, retiring bird that skulks in thickets and the forest understory, and it is easily confused with the similar Swainson's Thrush — the Gray-cheeked is grayer overall, with only a faint, incomplete eye-ring and a colder facial expression. Careful, close views are needed to be sure.
It breeds farther north than any of the other Catharus thrushes, in the stunted taiga and shrubby tundra edge of the far north, and it does not nest in Michigan. Instead it passes through as a migrant, moving through in spring and, less conspicuously, in fall. Like its relatives it migrates at night, and its thin, nasal, downward-inflected flight calls can be heard overhead on migration nights. Quiet and easily missed, the Gray-cheeked Thrush is a reminder of how much of migration passes unseen through the state's woodlands.
Forages on and near the ground for insects and other invertebrates, flipping leaf litter and gleaning from low vegetation, and shifts toward berries and fruit in late summer and fall to fuel its long migration. It feeds quietly in thickets and forest understory during its passage through the state.
The Gray-cheeked is grayer overall with a cold grayish face, only a faint incomplete eye-ring, and no bold buffy "spectacles." The Swainson's Thrush has warm buffy spectacles and a buff-washed face. Close views are usually needed.
No. It nests farther north than any other brown thrush, in the stunted taiga and shrub-tundra edge of the far north, and passes through Michigan only as a migrant in spring and fall.
It skulks quietly in thickets and understory by day, but like other thrushes it migrates at night, and its thin, nasal, downslurred flight calls can sometimes be heard overhead on migration nights.
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