Thrush rush
is the month when many birds which winter in
Britain begin to arrive. One of the more noticeable of these is Redwing, which moves southwest out of Fennoscandia, down through The Netherlands into France and Iberia, and also into Britain. The largest movements are usually seen on the east side of the country, often arriving first in the far north.
In 2021 there was a recordbreaking count of migrating Redwings in Britain with
34,727 at Leith Hill, Surrey, on 13 October just beating the previous British record set at The Pinnacle, Sandy, Bedfordshire, on the same date in 2009.
Other places with exceedingly high counts in 2021 were
32,060 at Flamborough Head, East Yorkshire, on 13 October and 21,832 at Glen Artney, Perthshire, on 20 October. Numbers like this usually result from strong easterly winds at a time the birds are passing south on the Continent, and Redwings are often accompanied by Fieldfares, Blackbirds and Song Thrushes.
Large migrating flocks of these winter thrushes can sometimes act as carriers for other rarer thrushes and it is always worth checking through feeding parties. Ring Ouzels are frequently found but the prize would be something like an Eyebrowed Thrush – one was found feeding with Redwings in Highland in late October 2021. October is also the best month for both Black-throated and White’s Thrush records and one of the latter was found dead in Dorset on 12 October 2021, with a live bird in Shetland a few days later.
Large movements of birds like Redwing can be seen in many parts of Britain and are an exciting part of visible migration watching (vis-mig) inland as well as on the coast (see pages 2428). Redwings can pass through in the daytime, and can then easily be counted, but they also frequently call when migrating at night, making numbers difficult to estimate. For an interesting article about nocturnal Redwing calls see soundapproach.co.uk/ redwing.
The largest movements of both Blackbirds and Fieldfares are slightly later than Redwing, mostly in late October and early November. For information on bird migration counts in Europe visit the Trektellen website at trektellen.org. This database contains counts from all over the world and from at least
250 sites in the UK. You can access latest counts by country, which lists records for each site as they are uploaded, or by species, and you can select ‘Record count’ to give the highest numbers seen. Nocturnal flight sites can also be selected. Chris Harbard