Present-day Viking raiders in our fields
It is hundreds of years ago since Viking raiders wreaked havoc among many of Scotland’s coastal communities. In the end, many of the Norsemen decided to settle here, their presence in the past still evident through their redheaded descendants!
We still get Viking raiders, albeit that these days they are of a feathered nature rather than axe and sword wielding humans. Nor do these raiders sail here in longboats, instead they fly here. The bulk of them descend upon us in October and indeed in recent days they have been very evident, mainly scattering at my approach and flying away … very rapidly as is their wont!
Flocks of fieldfares and redwings have suddenly become very evident in our autumn landscape. Like their erstwhile human raiders, they swarm across our countryside seemingly belligerently. However, they lack the evil intent that characterised their human predecessors of yesteryear, unless of course, you consider the mass exploitation of our berry crop as an offence against us. They have come here because in their native heaths, the frosts are now rapidly seizing the landscape, locking up their food supply of berries and invertebrates.
Even though when the clocks go back, we may be inclined to bouts of shivering, believe me our winter climate, compared with that of the northern and eastern territories these feathered nomads have left behind, is temperate in the extreme. Of course, we have the Atlantic current of the Gulf Stream to thank for a relatively mild if damp winter climate.
These two birds are to be compared with our own sedentary mistle and song thrushes. Of these northern thrushes, the fieldfares resemble in size our mistle thrushes but have grey heads and posteriors, the tips of their tails black, whilst the redwings are similar in size to the song thrushes but are adorned with a prominent red flash under the wings, particularly evident when the birds are in flight.
We may mourn the absence of our summer migrant visitors, those supremely athletic swallows together with the delightful martins and all those tuneful warblers, in all, some 50 million or so of them but it may come as something of a surprise to learn that we also during the autumn, welcome just as many winter visitors if not more!
The great skeins of geese may be the most obvious manifestation of these arrivals in this airt but the mixed flocks of fieldfares and redwings pepper our autumn landscapes too, rampaging here and there to exploit berries and feast on invertebrates. Thus, they become a very obvious presence whereas many of the other incoming migrants simply merge with native populations, from which they are virtually indistinguishable.
The advantage reaped by fieldfares in teaming up with redwings is that redwings seem better at discovering invertebrates and therefore the fieldfares stick close to the redwings as they seek such food. Redwings however, appear more adventurous in so far as they are prepared to visit urban and suburban areas in order to exploit the exotic berry bearing shrubs and trees so often planted in parks and gardens, whereas fieldfares very definitely shun urban and suburban areas.
I well remember seeing swarms of redwings stripping the berries from such a tree in the heart of Glasgow. There was not a fieldfare to be seen nor indeed a berry left when they had finished!
However, these Scandinavian thrushes do not necessarily always come to Britain and may well move on if conditions are severe. Perhaps like their human predecessors they wander far and wide. Viking settlements were certainly established in America, preColumbus. Indeed, redwings that have been ringed here in Britain one winter have been found as far away as Greece, Italy and Israel, during following winters. It would therefore seem that in general redwings may winter over very large areas.
Redwings also have a neat way of avoiding the likes of sparrowhawks. They will quite often invade woodland fringes where they turn over leaf litter in their search for insect life. If a hawk appears, they may evade capture by simply squatting among the leaves, well concealed by the fact that their mottled brown plumage gives them excellent camouflage.
In their native heath, fieldfares too wreak havoc among avian predators such as the sparrowhawks by getting together and dive bombing them, at the same time defecating. Such deposits damage the hawks’ plumage and so they generally give fieldfares a wide berth. I seem to remember that the earliest attempts to restore sea eagles to Scotland failed because of the presence of large numbers of fulmars at the re-introduction site.
Fulmars if threatened spit out a noxious material from their prominent nostrils. This too damages plumage, enough to send the sea eagles packing.
Curiously enough, the message that fieldfares repel predators in that way, has been received by other birds in those Scandinavian and Russian forests, for they deliberately choose to nest close to the fieldfares so that they too might benefit from the anti-raptor barrage! The passage of these mixed flocks of fieldfares and redwings we are seeing now, can sometimes be a noisy affair, the birds coarsely uttering a loud ‘chacking’ as they fly.
Some of these winter visitors come from as far away as Russia with or without love! Among these birds seeking winter solace here are also short-eared owls and tiny goldcrests. Indeed, it was once firmly believed that goldcrests actually travelled with the owls, even hitching lifts and hiding in the owls’ plumage. It was also believed that the tiny goldcrests acted as pilots for the incoming woodcock which according to some legends, spend their summers on the moon, a serious theory that was still regarded as true during the 18th century which was further promulgated by the poet Pope who wrote:
‘A bird of passage gone as soon as found
Now in the moon perhaps, now underground.’
Perceptive words on the part of the poet for surely no bird is as well camouflaged. I don’t know how many times I have been startled by the sudden flight of a woodcock, previously unseen because of its wonderfully camouflaged appearance, but now springing from almost beneath my feet from the woodland leaf litter and flying just tens of yards before returning to the ground and simply disappearing before my very eyes.
Tradition tells us that woodcock return here en masse on All Hallows Eve – Halloween - all together on the same evening. Obviously, it is impossible to identify woodcock which have migrated here for the winter from those that spend their entire lives here but astonishingly, it is thought that as many as a million woodcock descend upon us each winter. Some may arrive in woodland near you. Spot the birdie – now you see it, now you don’t!
If woodcock come to us to avoid serious frosts, as birds that find their food by prodding their long bills into the earth in their search for invertebrate life, they do get caught out when we have particularly severe frosts. Their answer to such a problem is often to then seek food close to roads that have been gritted, relying on the salt that overspills on to the verges to soften them sufficiently to enable the birds to prod into the now yielding ground. This tactic has its risks of course with traffic speeding by but they venture forth thus simply to find food and survive!
It was once firmly believed that the woodcock had no brains – indeed to call someone a ‘woodcock’ was to imply that this was a brainless person – a theory based upon the fact that woodcock are very easily caught in traps. However, the narrowness of the bird’s head with Its eyes set very much on the sides of that slender head, was also thought to leave no room for brains to be accommodated.
They’re clearly brainy enough, however, to work out that when the ground is frozen hard, the best place to search for food is where the salt has been spread! Not so brainless after all!