The cold snowy weather has been rather exciting or at least it has if your are not a starving bird struggling to find enough sustenance to get it through another freezing cold night. It's a good job many of us take pity on our avian friends and supplement their meagre rations with bits and pieces from our plentiful human store. I have heard of an Oxon chap who walked miles to his coop supermarket to supply his garden Fieldfares with apples, quite amazing and tremendously generous and of course a lifeline for these poor wretched creatures. The Oxford Ornithological Society chairman Alan Larkman has Kindly swept the snow away many times through these past days in order to make sure the two hundred Brambling and two hundred plus Linnets that have been regularly feeding on his large lawn for the past couple of months continued to take the huge amounts of millet, oilseed rape and linseed he puts down for them several times a day, this site is also feeding Bullfinch, Yellowhammer, Chaffinch and Tree Sparrow.
My own garden has had a few Fieldfare and Mistle Thrush taking advantage of the apples and Redwing seem to be everywhere this Winter. The Thrush family are aggressive and even when they are starving seem intent on bullying and claiming any food source to the exclusion of any of their fellows no matter how desperate they may be.The Oxon Feather.
Mistle Thrush appley eating away
Field fare also appley eating away
Redwing finding grub among the horse droppings
Mistle Thrush surveying for any interlopers.
Mistle Thrush attacking an apple
photo showing just how attractive Fieldfares are
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