The pied thrush (Geokichla wardii) is a member of the thrush family found in India and Sri Lanka. The males are conspicuously patterned in black and white while the females are olive brown and speckled. They breed in the central Himalayan forests and winter in the hill forests of southern India and Sri Lanka. Like many other thrushes, they forage on leaf litter below forest undergrowth and fly into trees when disturbed and sit still making them difficult to locate.
Description
left|thumb|Male wintering in Karnataka, IndiaMales of this thrush are conspicuously black and white. Mostly black on the upper parts it has a long white supercilium, and white tips to the wing coverts, tertials, rump and tail. The underparts are white with black flank spots the bill and legs are yellow. Females and young birds have the same basic pattern, but the black is replaced by dark brown, and the white by light brown. The markings on the underside are scalier. The third primary is the longest followed by the fourth with the second and fifth being nearly equal in length. The first primary is reduced. Jerdon and Charles Darwin corresponded with S.N. Ward who worked in the Madras Civil Service, posted for sometime at Sirsi and was known for his natural history studies and artistic talent.
Thomas C. Jerdon who first obtained a specimen of the species from Ward notes:
The species was variously placed in the past and for a long time in the genus Zoothera along with many other thrushes but molecular phylogenetic studies in 2008 clarified the phylogeny and the requirements for monophyly of the genera led to the older genus Geokichla being resurrected. The genus Zoothera now contains species that are not strongly sexually dimorphic unlike Geokichla. The pied thrush's closest relative is the Siberian thrush Geokichla sibirica.