Williamson's Weekly Nature Notes - Nov 4 2009

In fact these redwings and fieldfares invading England right now are not quite the docile little thrushes that we think they are.

Just try going near their nests in Norway in the summer and they may well dive out of the fir trees and bomb you with their droppings.

These northern thrushes are survivors, leaving the land of the Lapp for a life of ease in England. Even by mid October this year there were hundreds of them as far west as Exmoor, while the gardens of Surrey and Sussex were filling up with the berry-hunters.

And what a good crop of berries there is for them this autumn again, with the hedges loaded down with haws and hips. I have been watching them too in Kingley Vale near Chichester, where dozens of the soft-bills have been in the yew trees.

In that nature reserve there are about 15,000 female yew trees, some of them giants of a millennium in age.

Some of these grandmother trees have tens of thousands of red berries '“ actually a kind of resinous fir cone now looking more like a fairy lolly-pop '“ that the thrushes love.

These arils with their poisonous berry in the centre are more like soft jam than anything, and so easily swallowed. The redwings and fieldfares regurgitate pellets of pips and quickly go back for more, ingesting at least some of the sticky red juice even though much pulp is thrown-up.

Badgers also eat these berries with the same result, though hundreds a night pass through the mammals rather than being discarded through the mouth.

Nowadays with our open winters the redwing numbers in Sussex are down to about 5,000 counted birds by November and the same for fieldfares. Some years I have heard of 40,000 passing along the coast in cold weather.

Back in the 1960s I recall seeing hundreds of redwings on the beach at Thorney Island waiting for the tide to drop, then flying out to the emerging, stiff stems of spartina grass growing on the mudflats, and there picking winkles off almost from under the salt water, carrying these back to the stoney beach, and winkling out the soft bodies from within.

Many redwings, staying together in their flocks as they always will, like to hide in the woods and little fields of the damp weald, digging worms and insect larvae from the leafmould.

One or two have been recorded breeding here, and on the Kentish North Foreland, while a few dozen nest in Scotland. Winter would not be the same without these thrushes from the east.