Western Morning News (Saturday)
Autumn thrushes will soon be here
Now our summer migrants have departed, new arrivals from the north are set to take their place, among them the handsome redwing and fieldfare, writes
As chilly autumn winds stir up the first fallen leaves and shake the berries from laden bushes, flocks of thrushes drift south. Roaming our countryside, these wandering vagrants from the north seek food and the company of their kind.
Here to escape plummeting temperatures that will soon sweep Scandinavia and Iceland, they come in their hundreds of thousands, filling the air with their distinctive calls.
They are the fieldfares and redwings, harbingers of colder months ahead and a welcome addition, adding interest at a time when our bird life is depleted as summer migrants chase the sun south.
The chattering swirls of swallows and house martins which kept the sky busy into September have departed and soon we will see ragged flocks of fieldfares and redwings passing overhead.
They are both smart looking members of the thrush family, and with good views can be identified fairly easily. They also have recognisable calls that become part of the soundtrack of winter.
Our better-known resident thrushes – blackbirds, song thrushes and mistle thrushes – are also more nomadic in autumn and winter. Numbers of blackbirds are augmented by those from northern and eastern Europe, while gangs of mistle thrushes roam the countryside in search of food and some song thrushes move south as temperatures fall, even crossing to the Continent.
Fieldfares and redwings, however, won’t remain to breed come the spring – only rarely nesting in northern Britain – and instead head back to Scandinavia and northern
Europe, and also Iceland in the case of some redwings.
They are truly winter migrants, and after the first waves arrive from this month onwards, numbers build, especially if conditions become harsh further north.
At times in mid-winter it can seem as if they are strewn across every field, feeding amid the pasture or plundering windfall fruit and hedgerow berries, such as rowan and hawthorn. Best of all, they will also visit parks and gardens which provide natural sources of food.
The fieldfare is the larger of the pair. Robust and upright, these stocky birds have a grey head and rump, dark tail and reddish-brown back, and white underwings which are visible in flight. The light underside is densely spotted on the chest, which has a rusty-yellow tinge the colour of dark honey.
This gregarious migrant is almost always found in flocks and they communicate with hard calls chack-chack-chack, and will mix with other thrushes when feeding. They can be distinguished in a crowd by their pewter grey head and chestnut back.
Flocks of fieldfares march in loose formation across damp fields, hopping in a stop-start fashion in search of worms, beetles and other invertebrates, or descend on berry bushes to feast on the banquet.
Cackling and chuckling as they go, drifting flocks of fieldfares lift the spirits on wet and chilly days and they always feel like special birds, despite being common winter migrants.
It is shortages of autumn food that push them across the North Sea into
Britain from October onwards, and they can often be seen side by side with redwings, combing our countryside for food until the days begin to lengthen, the Arctic snows thaw and spring calls them back to their homelands to breed.
Around 700,000 fieldfares spend the winter in the UK before returning to northern and eastern Europe. If you have never knowingly seen one before, you stand every chance of an encounter if you take a walk on a frosty day in open countryside. And during snow they can be tempted into gardens with offerings of cut up apples and other titbits.
The redwing behaves in much the same fashion as its close relative and is a streaky-breasted and boldly marked bird, with a patch of rusty red on the flanks from which it gets its name. This red feathering is not always easy to spot, however another striking feature helps with identification: its distinctive white eyebrow. Coupled with a less pronounced light line under the cheek, the side of its face has a dark and light striped quality, unlike that of any of our other regular thrushes.
Roughly 650,000 redwings spend the colder months in Britain and flocks forage in open grassy areas, in orchards and along hedgerows, keeping in touch in flight with thin high-pitched whistling calls: seeep-seeep. You can even hear this call after dark as they migrate at night – a spellbinding sound when you realise that high above, in what seems like pitch blackness, these thrushes are on the move.
So, just like the first swallow of spring, now’s the time to look out and listen for the first fieldfare or redwing of autumn.