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Fieldfare (Turdus pilaris) — photo 1 of 4
© Frankie Fouganthin CC BY-SA 4.0

Thrushes · Perching birds

Fieldfare

Turdus pilaris

Year-round

Voice

Song

Grégoire Chauvot

0:34

Call

Sonothèque ADVL

0:08

Call

Sonothèque ADVL

0:05

How to recognize it

  • Grey head, neck and rump; brown back

  • Breast and flanks heavily spotted

  • White underwing visible in flight

  • Harsh ‘tsak-tsak’ call, often in flocks

About the species

Fieldfare often gives itself away by how it lives, not by one single look. It tends to stay out in the open and is most noticeable in loose groups rather than on its own.

It is noisy, social, and especially alert in flight and when gathered in trees. When alarmed, the whole group can lift off at once, and in winter these flocks may become quite large.

In the warmer months it uses woodland edges, parks, orchards, and gardens, and it avoids deep forest. It eats both animal and plant food, turning especially to berries in winter; some populations stay through the season while others move south.

Did you know?

  • Irregular migrants

    Fieldfares irrupt unpredictably across Europe every few winters: a warm breeding season boosts both their numbers and the berry crop, but the following autumn the crop fails and the swollen population must move in search of food.

  • Faeces-bombing the magpie

    When a magpie approaches a fieldfare colony, the birds mob it in coordinated dives, releasing precisely aimed feces that can plaster the predator so thoroughly it tumbles to the ground.

  • Hundred-metre blackbird exclusion zone

    A lone fieldfare wintering in a suburban garden systematically expelled every blackbird from its food supply, enforcing an exclusion zone extending a hundred metres in all directions.

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Sources