Williamson's Weekly Nature Notes

The mistle thrush, a larger bird shown here, also suffers frosts since they rely on berries. Many thrushes will have migrated to France and Italy where they are favourites of the gunners.

A year or two ago I saw gunners in Portugal bagging song thrushes which were roasted in the local vende (inn). Fieldfares which come here from Scandinavia suffer in frosty weather too, 18 years ago during heavy snowfalls I found three dead in a small area near Chichester.

Back in the bad winter of 1916/17, the ornithologist John Walpole-Bond found hundreds of fieldfares dead on the downs and along the coastal fringe.

My research for the British Trust for Ornithology over a period of 46 years when I have carried out a continuous bird census over two areas of West Sussex woodland shows that one of the birds to be badly hit by cold is the wren. After the 1962/3 winter wrens dropped from 20 pairs in 180 acres of downland wood at Kingley Vale to only one pair.

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette February 25