Going for a song…
Thrushes need a helping hand in your garden
It’s never a good idea to second guess the British summer, is it? A few weeks ago the record-breaking heat was an issue, but since then there have been days of heavy rain.
What it all means for our garden birds will take time to play out. One of the species that’s most vulnerable to weather troubles is the song thrush, of which I’m particularly fond. Whenever I hear its soulful song I’m transported back to the summer evenings of childhood.
All of the thrush family have good singing voices, but the song thrush has the best – strong and clear with phrases repeated time and again. Back when I was a boy, the song thrush was common or garden, but times change. It’s reckoned the bird’s population halved between 1970 and 2010.
Why that has happened isn’t entirely clear. Some of it’s probably down to changes in the countryside, including less mixed farming, bigger fields (and, therefore, not so much hedgerow for nesting) and widespread pesticide use.
Another problem is that song thrushes do most of their searching for food in damper areas, where worms are easier to find. In the farmed countryside, these boggy patches of ground are now far less common because the land is drained more efficiently.
When the experts have looked at the details of song thrush life they’ve seen that adults fare reasonably well given all these problems, but that youngsters struggle. In fact, few make it through their first winter.
Innocents abroad, they lack what it takes to avoid cars, cats and other hazards, or to find food in hard times. All in all, it adds up to a rather gloomy picture, so if you share garden space with a song thrush family, offer a helping hand.