Turdus pilaris
A large, gregarious winter thrush with a blue-grey head.
Size: 25.5 cm | Habitat: Garden Birds | Season: Winter visitor (Oct-Mar)
A big, bold thrush, the fieldfare has a blue-grey head and rump, chestnut-brown back, and a boldly spotted golden-buff breast. It's usually seen in noisy, chattering flocks rather than alone.
Blue-grey head and rump · chestnut-brown back · spotted golden-buff breast · long tail · upright, alert stance
Fieldfares arrive in large numbers from Scandinavia each winter, often mixed with redwings, descending on berry-laden hedgerows, orchards, and garden trees. In hard weather, flocks will readily visit gardens for windfall apples.
Fieldfares are known to mob predators as a group, with the whole flock diving at and defecating on an intruding bird of prey to drive it away.
The Fieldfare (Turdus pilaris) is a big, bold winter thrush with a blue-grey head and rump, a chestnut-brown back, and a boldly spotted golden-buff breast, usually encountered in noisy, chattering flocks rather than alone.
Large numbers arrive in the UK from Scandinavia each winter, often travelling and feeding alongside redwings as they descend on berry-laden hedgerows, orchards, and garden trees, and will readily turn to windfall apples once natural berry supplies run low in hard weather. Like the redwing, only a handful of pairs breed in the UK itself, mostly in Scotland, making fieldfares essentially a winter-only bird across the rest of Britain.
Understanding the fieldfare's dramatic seasonal abundance versus its near-absence as a UK breeder illustrates how a bird's conservation status can hinge entirely on the tiny fraction of its population that actually nests here, regardless of how common it looks in winter.
🔴 Conservation status: Red (UK Birds of Conservation Concern 5)
Red-listed. Like the redwing, the UK holds only a handful of breeding pairs of fieldfare, mostly in Scotland, making the species' UK breeding status highly vulnerable despite the large numbers that arrive to winter here from Scandinavia. Its Red-listed status reflects the fragility of that tiny breeding population, not the winter flocks familiar in gardens and hedgerows.