Christmas Day redwing All through autumn and into winter I've been on a quest, following redwing and fieldfare. Hearing their contact calls as flocks flew overhead to settle in the tops of high trees, distant trees. Sometimes, the experience is all- forget the photographs they're not going to happen. On Christmas Day a lone redwing sat sunlit in our garden birch. He returned on Boxing Day but it was cloudy and dull.
A supercilium defines the bird, a pale eyebrow. Thrush-like chevrons on the breast and where breast meets under-wing a rusty red which gives the bird its name. Zoom in further and colour shows but focus is lost. For now, my best redwing image.
A supercilium defines the bird, a pale eyebrow. Thrush-like chevrons on the breast and where breast meets under-wing a rusty red which gives the bird its name. Zoom in further and colour shows but focus is lost. For now, my best redwing image.
Unless you've tried to photograph these nervous birds you've no idea how challenging it is. You could be lucky. Like the day Pauline and I came upon a sunlit flock of redwing and fieldfare outside Kendal Parish Church, feasting on holly berries and yew arils. Hiding in thick evergreen foliage. Where the sun lit the birds as they gathered in the tops of leafless trees. The day I hadn't taken a camera. Always a mistake. I returned several times and found the birds but the light was poor and they were too distant. I glimpsed fieldfare flying out of dense holly bushes, and vanishing.
All the way from Finland, Sweden, Norway or Arctic Russia, he comes like the Snow Queen. On a Christmas Day so mild his being here feels somewhat anomalous. I think of winter thrush coming to gardens in freezing temperatures.
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