Early bird catches the worm

 

An early morning trip to the local park gave me great joy when I witnessed this song thrush capture his worm breakfast.  I got a good sequence of shots as it did battle with the worm.  

In the past I have really struggled to get a sharp shot of a thrush, so was pleased to have at long last nailed a shot.  I think the high shutter speed of 1/2500 sec. helped.  I set an aperture of f/6.3 and had an ISO of 1250 thanks to a bright morning.  To get a slightly better composition, I got as low as possible to the ground without lying on the path in the park and looking very odd.  

I struggled to decide if this was a song thrush or the mistle thrush.  I know the key way to distinguish the two is size—the mistle thrush is larger—but I couldn't judge that from the photo.  Looking up three books didn't help either, so I asked advice on a Facebook Group which helps users identify birds.  I was advised that the spots on the song thrush look like upside-down hearts  and are more rounded on the mistle thrush.  The spots also form in lines near the throat area on the song thrush.  One thing I did find helpful from one of the books was that the wings on the mistle thrush have light edges, which is clearly not the case with the bird in my photo.