Autumn and Winter Birds

Ecologist Gill Thompson explores some of the birds you might encounter in Northumberland National Park during autumn and winter. We will be adding to this page as the seasons progress.

In the spring we looked at breeding birds; both our resident species and the ones that migrate to Northumberland. You can visit our Tweet Tuesday page here to revisit them.

Now it is autumn and heading into winter I will look at some of the birds that stay here and ones that visit from further north.  Birds migrate to find food and good conditions to raise their young in spring, but in winter some also move to find food and weather conditions to allow them to survive the shorter, colder days in the northern hemisphere.

Many birds move from arctic and sub-arctic areas where, in the winter, it is too cold to live and there is little available food.  Even Northumberland in mid-winter is preferable to Iceland, Greenland and Siberia!

Jay

The jay is a colourful member of the crow family which is usually quite secretive. At this time of the year you can see and hear them more than in spring or summer. Listen out for their harsh, screechy call and then see their white rump as they fly away with a acorn in their beaks.

A Jay sitting on a branch

Image by Tomasz Proszek from Pixabay

Jays are chunky birds that have striking plumage, but can be hard to see. They have a pink body with blue flashes on the wings, a black moustache and black and white on broad wings. Jays are important for spreading acorns from oak trees; they collect acorns, then fly away from the tree to a surrounding field or woodland and bury them to eat later. One bird can bury around 3000 acorns in autumn and more amazingly they can remember where most of them are.  The acorns they don’t find again can become oak trees – or they find them when they sprout into seedlings the next year. Look out for jays in places like Collingwood oaks, College valley and Holystone woods.

Listen to the Jay below:

Redwing

Redwings start arriving in Northumberland in September and October so are often one of the first winter migrants you will see.  They are members of the thrush family that breed in Scandinavia, Russia and Iceland (and rarely in Scotland).

An example of a redwing against a blue sky

They about the same size as our resident song thrush and although they do have rusty red underwings and flanks as the name suggests, the most obvious identification feature is the white or cream stripe above the eye. They gather in flocks and can be seen eating berries such as holly and hawthorn in hedges and woodland edges. In the National Park you are more likely to see them in the river valleys and Cheviot fringes rather than high up in the hills and if it is really cold they may leave and fly further west and south. Flocks can be quite noisy with squeaky calls and scolding ‘chat’ noises.

Listen to the Redwing below:

Fieldfare

The fieldfare is another thrush that arrives from colder climes in autumn and stays until March.

A small Fieldfare eating berries from a bush.

It is similar in size to our resident mistle thrush. They often stand quite upright with a long tail and flash of silver/white on the wings as they take off.  Seen at close range they are multi-coloured birds with a grey head, spotted breast, brown back and black tail.

Flocks can be seen in fields and short grassland where they feed on the ground probing the soil for invertebrates. They also feed on fallen fruit and berries in bushes and hedges when the ground is frozen.  They are nearly always seen in groups and can be quite noisy making a harsh ‘chack chack’ sound, which is a little bit like the rattle of mistle thrush but you would never see them in large groups.

They can be seen anywhere across the National Park over the winter months; listen out for the loud chacking sound.

Listen to the Fieldfare below:

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