The thrush is represented by a number of species, one of which, the sabia (Mimus), has become the popular song-bird of Brazil through a poem written by Gonsalves Dias.
Mimus polyglottus, the northern mocking-bird, inhabits the southern part of the United States, being in the north only a summer visitant; it breeds rarely in New England, is seldom found north of the 38th parallel, and migrates to the south in winter, passing that season in the Gulf States and Mexico.
Of the various other genera allied to Mimus, the best known are the thrashers (genus Harporhynchus) of which six or eight species are found in North America, which are thrush-like and shy in their habits and do not mimic; and the cat-bird (Galeoscoptes carolinensis), which in addition to having an attractive song, utters clucks, whistles and mewing sounds.
The so-called mountain mocking-bird (Oreoscoptes montanus) is a form not very distant from Mimus; but it inhabits exclusively the plains overgrown with sage-brush (Artemisia) of the interior tableland of North America, and is not at all imitative in its notes, so that it is an instance of a misnomer.