Birds Winter Visitors

[gpspete]

I have noticed in the last few days a large increase in the amount of Redwings http://www.rspb.org....wing/index.aspx about these used to be considered a precuser to the weather,

probably more than normal amount here foraging for food though due to the severe cold weather in skandinavia in recent weaks. Perhaps they are on omen to incoming weather who knows ?

[osmposm]

Pete, I think nature - and especially a bird such as a redwing, fieldfare, waxwing, etc - is more likely to be reactive than predictive. I entirely agree that the redwings' presence in unusually large numbers is a result of harsh weather in Scandinavia....but unless their evolutionary survival instincts have gone seriously wrong, they would be heading here because the weather's likely to be less harsh, and their food supply more available.

I imagine that their genes tell them to move south & west when times are hard in winter (as they always do to some extent). My guess is that if they find it's not getting warmer, and the ground is still frozen and snow-covered, the big flocks will head even further south & west to Devon & Cornwall, and even across to France. So perhaps that's the sign we should be looking for - a big, but temporary explosion in numbers, followed by the disappearance of most of them again! Bird-feeders like myself will of course ensure that some can and will remain - especially in the milder urban areas. I always get a few every winter - usually a smallish group of six or twelve, though they seldom stay long. I love them!

Ossie

Edited December 16, 2010 by osmposm

[frozen bluebird]

ive seen a Jack Snipe for the first time up here in the Forest of Dean

[jethro]

I was at work today just outside Bristol and walking, bold as brass across the garden was a Black Grouse; lawd knows where that came from but it must be lost.