Winter Thrushes

The arrival of the winter thrushes from the far north of Europe is one of our great annual bird events. Driven south and west from their breeding grounds as the temperatures drop in the northern latitudes they arrive in the region in huge numbers, especially in colder winters like this year.

The large car park on the Science Site (on the road up to Mountjoy) has a couple of rowan trees just by the entrance and at lunchtime on the last day before the christmas holiday break they were absolutely covered in yellow berries and absolutely heaving with 4 of the members of the thrush family that can be seen in Durham during winter (fieldfare, redwing, mistle thrush and blackbird). By 5pm the trees were stripped bare and the birds long gone.

The fieldfare (above) and the redwing (below) only visit us in winter.

Although the blackbird, mistle thrush (below) and song thrush can be seen all year round in Durham, our resident birds are joined by huge numbers that migrate here, like the fieldfare and redwing, and swell the local population during winter.

The British Trust for Ornithology has tracked the arrival of fieldfares through its birdtrack scheme and published a graph for the last three years on it web site (click here). This shows a remarkable consistency in arrival dates and numbers. The peak in 2010 records coincided with my sightings in Durham.

Identification is fairly straightforward if you can get close to feeding birds or have binoculars. Fieldfares are exceptionally beautiful with distinctive grey heads. Redwings can be identified by the creamy eye stripe. They do also show a russett red patch on their sides.

The mistle thrush and the song thrush are similar but the mistle is bigger with cleaner-looking spots on a whiter breast than the song thrush.

There are size differences too if you see them together. Fieldfares and mistle thrushes are bigger and chunkier than redwings and song thrushes.