Red alert with a super squeal
Few sounds prick up a birdwatcher’s ears more readily than the haunting shriek of a redwing flying high overhead.
On the foggiest days or darkest of moonless nights, the supernatural squeal carries in a way that belies this diminutive thrush’s stature.
Blackbirds and fieldfares have more powerful songs, yet the redwing’s highpitched flight note, honed to keep migrating flocks in close contact, has a knack of making you look to the skies.
Difficulty finding suitable words to describe the sound no doubt accounts for the way its modern name focuses on a plumage feature rather than its signature call. A look through the archives does throw up an ancient, if slightly derogatory, name for the redwing: the swine pipe.
The eminent Victorian ornithologist Alfred Newton wrote how the name derived from the “soft inward whistle which the bird often utters, resembling the sound of the pipe used by the swineherds of old when collecting animals under their charge.”
There are not too many swineherds knocking around these days with which to confuse the redwing’s call, and which is now being heard with increasing frequency throughout suburbia during the coldest days of winter.
Berry-rich gardens and parklands are playing a vital role in the survival of redwings as the countryside’s natural harvest begins to run bare.
Ornamental shrubs and frost-free lawns provide both fruits and invertebrates that can make a life-or-death difference when temperatures plunge, while also building up body fat for the long migration back to Scandinavia and beyond, come the spring.
This desperation to take on calories often gives birdwatchers the chance to approach foraging flocks and discover why the name redwing is something of a misnomer. On the ground or perched in a bush, the ‘red wing’ is quickly revealed to be a rusty-hued go-faster stripe that runs down its flanks, accentuating the smudgy breast speckling.
Besides the shrill flight calls, redwings can often be heard practising their territorial spring song in late winter – a jumble of flutey notes that creates atmospheric images of their dense snowy forest haunts that stretch from Norway across to the Bering Sea.
Berry-rich gardens are playing a vital role in their survival