An apple a day is not, it seems, for sharing

THE crop on my single garden apple tree this autumn was particularly good. Unfortunately the apple trees owned by friends and neighbours were equally laden, so no one in my village was particularly keen to share in my bounty. In short, I couldn’t give them away.

However, those that haven’t yet gone into sauces and crumbles and are piled in boxes in the shelter of the veranda are proving popular with the birds – in particular a visitor from northern Europe with a fondness for fruit.

I have been regularly lobbing a few of the stored apples showing the slightest signs of rot back under the tree, and they are being hollowed out and picked clean by a member of the thrush family called a fieldfare.

Fieldfares are stocky and handsome, with a grey head and streaked honey-coloured chest. They are also bossy birds that don’t like to share.

Back in early 2019 I had an individual fieldfare which jealously guarded the apple tree for weeks on end, chasing away other birds and dining on the apples I supplied, either on the ground or tied to branches.

It seems the same situation is repeating itself, even though it is highly unlikely to be the same individual bird.

This winter’s tenant fieldfare will not tolerate any other bird near its apple hoard, even seeing off larger species like crows and magpies.

Still, despite its stroppy nature, it is wonderful to have in the garden, and more than welcome to my spare windfalls.

The name fieldfare dates back to Anglo-Saxon times, when this species was known as a ‘felde-fare’, or ‘traveller over the fields’.

Nomads from the north, they come here to escape potentially lethal blizzards and plunging Arctic temperatures. Ragged flocks, typically accompanied by smaller redwings, can be seen searching for worms in fields or stripping bushes of berries.

Lengthening days will eventually call these winter wanderers back to

their homelands. In the meantime I’m hoping my visitor sticks around over the weeks to come. A welcome guest for the price of a few old apples.

Charlie Elder > A fieldfare enjoys the garden apples