A recent cold snap has brought Britain’s winter thrushes, fieldfares and redwings, suddenly back into view after a strangely quiet autumn. These birds usually arrive in large numbers as reliably as swallows signal summer, yet this year many fields and hedgerows remained empty, with hawthorn berries untouched. That changed around the new year, when falling temperatures prompted flocks to emerge across the countryside. Redwings, smaller and neatly marked with rusty-red flanks and pale eyestripes, appeared alongside bulkier fieldfares, whose grey heads and blotched yellowish breasts are matched by their distinctive chacking calls.
Each winter, hundreds of thousands of these thrushes spend months in Britain before migrating north and east to breed in spring, redwings heading to Iceland and fieldfares to eastern Europe. Only small numbers now breed in northern Britain, and climate change is causing those populations to shrink further. Whether warming winters will eventually deter these seasonal visitors altogether remains uncertain. For now, their return during winter cold is a reassuring and welcome sign of the season’s rhythm.
