A brisk north-easterly wind has brought snow once again to Kent and a return visit of Fieldfares to the garden too. Whilst some birds are still feeding on Apples at the back of the garden, two are feeding close to the house on the Dog Rose berries (Rose hips in the garden hedge. The Rose hips, tough and and unmovable for most of the winter, have now softened and the Fieldfares have quickly devoured most of the fruit they can reach. What remaining Rose hips there are lie at the end of thin stems, a place from where this large Thrush struggles to collect, but now the Fieldfares fly-up, strike and knock the berries down to eat from the lawn.
Interestingly, our local garden Blackbird pair are very aggressive to the Fieldfares near the house, constantly chasing the them away. This is something of a surprise to me, as the much larger Fieldfare is usually the undisputed and (uninvited) garden king.
Apologies for yet another collection of Fieldfare close-ups. These were taken with much better light conditions, and you should find these are higher quality images than those on previous posts. Also, you simply never know when Fieldfares will arrive back in our winter gardens, the last time was 10 years ago.
This is 'our' Blackbird who has been busy chasing the Fieldfares away from it's garden territory. Frustratingly, it won't tolerate our garden Song Thrushes either. Our bird (we should have given it a name by now) is easily recognisable by its drooped left wing. It's been around the garden and fathered dozen of fledglings for at least four years.
1 comment:
Love the pics - only a little snow up here, just grey and miserable so we're still decorating!
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