FieldfareCam

Here is another new species for my trail camera.  These pictures were recorded in my mother's garden in Northamptonshire.  We had noticed a fieldfare eating fallen apples and set up a camera to get a closer look.  The camera is a Wingscapes BirdCam Pro which records HD video and can take 20MP jpg stills although these photos are frame grabs from the videos.  The quality is reasonable.

Here are a couple of videos.  Again the quality is reasonably good, perhaps better in softer light than bright sunlight. The camera has an adjustable preset focus and the depth of field seems narrow, even in good light.

Winter thrushes

Life is hard for the birds in this weather, with every waking moment spent trying to find food.  This especially true for the thrushes whose natural food is covered by the lying snow.  There have been more blackbirds in the garden this week than I can ever remember.  I counted a whole pieful in one go.

I have been putting out apples for the blackbirds and they have also attracted redwings.

I saw one fieldfare, briefly.  It came late in the afternoon when the apples had all gone but it didn't stay.  I put out more apples, hoping it would return for a better photo but if it did I didn't see it so this was all I managed.

I heard a mistle thrush in the trees but it didn't come down to the food.  I think mistle thrushes prefer berries but there are no berries left in the garden.  I also saw a couple of song thrushes.  I think they are often in the woodland part of the garden and under the hedges but I don't usually see them near the house.

This one was pleased to find a snail.  I saw another this afternoon eating a piece of apple but it was too far away for a photo.

Of all the thrushes I think the redwing is my favourite so here are a couple more.

End of year favourites - Farther afield

This post is the last of my end-of-year reviews and shows a few photos from beyond Newcastle and Northumberland. The most exciting bee of the year was the wool carder bee which I found in Regent's Park in London.  These are ♂ above and ♀ below.

Other sightings in or near the village where my mother lives in Northamptonshire were brown hawker (♂)

Southern hawker (♂)

Fieldfare

Hairy-footed flower bee (♂)

Beautiful demoiselle (immature ♂ and ♀)

Tawny mining bee (♀ above, ♂ below)

And in Co Durham a red squirrel.

I wish you a Happy New Year.

Bird of the week - Fieldfare

The fieldfare is a large handsome thrush that visits us in the winter.  It is usually a fairly shy bird found in fields and orchards but will visit gardens if the weather is harsh or if there are apples to be found.  I rarely see fieldfares in my garden but these birds were in my mother's garden in Northamptonshire last week where they were feeding on windfall apples.

They are aggressive birds and keep a sharp eye out for other fieldfares or blackbirds or starlings that might try to steal their apples.

Fieldfares arrive in October, as shown on this BTO BirdTrack graph.

The reporting rate in gardens is very variable from year to year, presumably because of variations in the weather. 1996/97 and 2010/11 were both very cold winters.

Fieldfares are very rare breeders in this country.  Our winter visitors come from Scandinavia with up to a million birds arriving each autumn.  They quickly spread out across most of rural lowland parts of the British Isles.

This EBCC map shows the breeding distribution

Thomas Bewick drew this fieldfare for A History of British Birds (1797).

Archibald Thorburn painted a pair of fieldfares with a redwing.

You can listen to Chris Packham's BBC Radio 4 Tweet of the Day on fieldfare here.