The cocoa thrush (Turdus fumigatus) is a species of bird in the family Turdidae. It is found on St. Vincent, Grenada, and Trinidad and in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, and Venezuela.
Taxonomy and systematics
The cocoa thrush was originally described in 1823 with the binomial Turdus fumigatus and has kept that binomial ever since.
The IOC, BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World, and AviList assign it these five subspecies:
- T. f. aquilonalis (Cherrie, 1909)
- T. f. orinocensis Zimmer, JT & Phelps, WH, 1955
- T. f. fumigatus Lichtenstein, MHC, 1823
- T. f. bondi Deignan, 1951
- T. f. personus (Barbour, 1911)
However, the Clements taxonomy does not recognize T. f. bondi but includes it within T. f. personus. Some authors have suggested that bondi and personus represent one or two separate species. Clements recognizes some distinctions within the cocoa thrush, calling T. f. personas (with Bondi included) as the "cocoa thrush (Lesser Antillean)" and the other three subspecies as the "cocoa thrush (cocoa)" and "fumigatus group".
- T. f. orinocensis: eastern base of Venezuelan Andes from Barinas south and western Amazonas
- T. f. bondi: St. Vincent
- T. f. personus: Grenada
The southern and eastern edges of the species' range in Amazonian Brazil roughly follow a line from southern Rondônia east to southern Tocantins and then northeast to the Atlantic in Maranhão. Some sources include eastern Bolivia in the range of T. f. fumigatus. BirdLife International places the species on many other islands in the Lesser Antilles in addition to St. Vincent and Grenada; no other source does so.
The cocoa thrush inhabits a variety of landscapes, many of which are somewhat open. They include the interior, clearings, and edges of humid forest, somewhat open woodlands, and gallery forest. In many areas it shows a preference for areas near water such as swampy locales and várzea forest. It also regularly is found in parks, gardens, cultivated areas with trees, and cacao and shade coffee plantations. In Suriname it is found only in forest within savanna and in forest on coastal sand ridges. In coastal French Guiana it is found in mangroves and swamp forest. On Trinidad it favors cocoa plantations. In Colombia the species ranges in elevation up to , in Venezuela north of the Orinoco River to and to south of it, and in Brazil to . It is "frequent to uncommon" in Brazil.