Redwings have blue Christmas
WHEN I am checking I have my facts right about birds, I often check out the RSPB website and I really like looking at the distribution maps.
These maps will tell if a bird lives here all year round, just pops over in summer or winter or lands for a bit and then flies off to somewhere warmer.
If the map goes blue then it’s a winter visitor and that’s exactly the colour for the redwing.
Yes, the map goes blue for the redwing, does that make sense?
There is also bit of green around a couple of lochs in Scotland where redwings live all year.
In the North West of England, redwings have been around for a couple of weeks now, often migrating in at night.
You may hear them, they have a distinctive ‘tsee, tsee’ call as they fly above your garden heading for a local meadow.
Redwings arrive in the north west, normally in large numbers, from Northern Europe in late September or early October, travelling with fieldfares, so they are well settled by December.
They spend winter here on our fields and meadows, but feasting on worms and berry-heavy bushes around the region.
They will be here until March when food supplies increase in their summer haunts.
Last year, I spotted a flock of around 100 redwing and fieldfare in a meadow close to my home, but you see much, much bigger flocks.
Both are members of the thrush family so these get-togethers will be ‘mutations’, I suppose.
So mutations of more than a thousand birds have been common in the noughties and since then.
The average winter population in these parts is around 12,000, just coming over here for a warm.
The redwing is our smallest thrush.
It is dark brown above and white below, with black streaks on its breast and the orangey-red flanks and underwing that give it its name.
I like its face pattern with a white eyebrow strip and cheeks of dark brown.
There are still some people who believe our winter landscapes are barren places for people and wildlife.
Ignore them and get your warm clothes out, you will be rewarded with lots of birds inhabiting our countryside in the colder months.
And if you think that it’s cold, try flying back to Northern Europe at this time of year.
It makes me shiver just to think about it.