Taxonomy
This species was first described by Linnaeus in his Systema naturae in 1758 under its current scientific name.
The English name derives from the bird's red underwing. It is not closely related to the Red-winged Blackbird, a North American species sometimes nicknamed "redwing", which is an icterid, not a thrush. The binomial name derives from the Latin words Turdus, "thrush", and ile "flank".
The Redwing has two subspecies:
- T. i. iliacus, the nominate subspecies described by Linnaeus, which breeds in mainland Eurasia.
- T. i. coburni described by Richard Bowdler Sharpe in 1901, which breeds in Iceland and the Faroe Islands and winters from western Scotland and Ireland south to northern Spain. It is darker overall, and marginally larger than the nominate form.
Read more about this topic: Redwing