Wildlife in the garden - fieldfare

Fieldfares are visitors to our gardens and parks during the winter months - they come to the UK from Scandinavia and Russia from September to April, sticking to rural areas and countryside, and venturing into gardens and residential areas when food is scarce or during bad weather.

You might mistake a fieldfare for a thrush, thanks to its speckled breast, but fieldfares are a little bigger and more colourful, sporting a reddish-brown back and wings, a blue-grey head and yellow beak. They generally go about in flocks, often seen together with another winter visitor, the smaller, brown coloured redwing. Look for flocks of similar sized birds flitting from tree to tree, and making a distinctive ‘chacking’ call in flight.

Fieldfare feed on berries and windfall apples.  They’re often spotted on trees such as hawthorn, holly, yew, rowan, cotoneaster or dog rose, so planting some of these in your garden may encourage them in, and help support their declining UK population.