Abyssinian ground thrush
species of bird
The Abyssinian ground thrush (Geokichla piaggiae) is a thrush from the family Turdidae which is native to north-east Africa where it lives at high altitude in montane forests. Its binomial nomenclature honors the 19th century Italian explorer of East Africa Carlo Piaggia.
Description
The Abyssinian ground thrush is an attractive but rather secretive species. The adults are a deep rufous orange on the head and face with a distinct white eye ring, the orange colour becomes les rufous on the breast and flanks and the upperparts are olive brown except for the orange-brown rump and tail. On the folded wing it shows two prominent white wingbars from the tips to the coverts. Immature birds tend to be paler and duller than the adults. They measure 19–20 cm (7.5–7.9 in) in length and weigh 43–65 g (1.5–2.3 oz).
Voice
The contact call of the Abyssinian ground thrush is a high pitched "tseep", the song is a typical thrush like melodious series of whistled phrases rendered in Sinclair & Ryan as "chee-cheeleeroo-chruup".
Distribution and subspecies
There are six currently recognised subspecies of Abyssinian ground thrush and they are listed below with their distributions:
Geokichla piaggiae hadii (Macdonald, 1940): South Sudan in the Imatong and Dongotona Mountains.
Geokichla piaggiae piaggiae (Bouvier, 1877): eastern South Sudan in the Boma Plateau and Ethiopia south to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and northern and western Kenya.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 30, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q841635. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1940 and 1877.
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This entry incorporates text from “Abyssinian ground thrush” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.