The most surprising and most welcome visitor was a fieldfare which spent a lot of time searching the winter debris in my mixed border. Great! The organic way of removing unwanted slugs and insect pests. Much tidier than my resident blackbirds when they search for food and toss the discarded leaves etc. all over the paths! All I supply for my birds is fresh water. They have to search for everything else, i.e. garden pests. I also grow shrubs with suitable berries and leave herbaceous plants unprunned until late winter so they have a supply of seeds to eat. Normally the garden is full of birds, but once again for birdwatch weekend most of them stayed away, including my resident sparrow family. Normally there are at least a dozen of them living in the top of the bay tree. I hope they had gone on a "day trip", rather than succumbed to the winter weather or worse still, been eaten by a sparrow hawk, which happened a couple of years ago.
Hi Plantsman, thanks for posting. Fieldfare have been widely recorded in gardens recently, especially during the snowy weather. We were out on the reserve here at the Lodge clearing some birch and a flock of redwing were doing the same thing in the leaf litter, there are quite a few invertebrates even during the winter to keep them fed. Given the fieldfares aggressive attitude to other birds it may be him that is keeping the other birds at bay. During the birdwatch the fiedlfare in my patch did a great job of moving on any other bird, even the resident house sparrows! My guess would be that they ahve relocated to a garden nearby that doesn't have a fieldfare in it!
Warden Intern at Otmoor.
I had a fantastic view of a whole flock of Fieldfare, although they weren't classed as being in my garden (which is at the back of my property) They were however viewed from my living room window, so I have included them in the garden watch. I live in a quiet close which apart from car parking areas at each end, there is no through traffic. We are a small established community & a few years ago some late fruiting apple trees were planted on the green outside of the properties, these apple trees are there to feed the birds through the winter. This is what attracted the flock of Fieldfare, the snow was heavy on the ground for about 5 days & it was the noise of the flock that drew me to the window & what a display I saw in front of me. The apple tree was heavy with birds pecking at the apples, with more on the ground picking up the dropped bits,but there were loads more birds in other trees in the close waiting very loudly for their turn.
Initially, I didn't know what these birds were & had to look them up & was made up to realise that they are in the red status & that I had witnessed something quite special.
Oh, I live in Wiltshire
Hi Doodles
Must have been quite a sight. A lot of people on the Forum reported seeing Fieldfares in their gardens during the cold snap. I had a couple feeding on apples which I had to buy to keep them happy.
They are in fact a common winter visitor with about three quarters of a million coming to the UK. Normally, they tend to stick to open countryside, parkland etc. but when the ground is covered in snow or frozen they seek food in gardens.
The Red Status refers to the fact that only a handful breed in the UK but they are not a threatened species in Europe.
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Tony
My Flickr Photostream
Thank you TJ for explaining about the red status :)
The fieldfare was in the front garden foraging on its own. The majority of our resident birds only visit the back garden, apart from the blackbirds and resident sparrows. Unfortunately my beautiful Photinia davidiana only managed to produce one bunch of berries last year, probably a result of such a poor summer. Normally the blackbirds rely on it as their food larder, so they have only had insects and slugs in the back garden. and will have had to feed elsewhere. The strong winds recently have stripped the Miscanthus sinensis of their seeds; the usual feeding place for the sparrows. It is great watching them feed at the top of the flower stems!