300 : Song Thrush

Song Thrush - Turdus philomelos

After all that agonising about going out and finding a spectacular 300th bird for the site I got to thinking I couldn't wait until the weekend. I realised I took some shots of a Song Thrush on Boxing Day while in the UK and that by some miracle I had not posted up a picture of this truly common or garden bird. I will check back again but I think, again surprisingly, its one of those "I can get that anytime birds". So that's 300 - the wagons still rolling along very slowly - its only a few months until the site is 3 year's old. I have a little ritual at the centenaries which involves updating the Top Ten and at some point changing the extra page that carries other wildlife. Top Ten is going to get harder and harder - at 400 I might allow myself 15. I am getting ahead of myself - first some words about Song Thrushes.

I have been listening to some wonderful Radio 4 podcasts called Tweet of the Day. There are hundreds of these little 1-2 minute bird cameos that have been broadcast to date narrated in particular by David Attenborough. A 30 minute session on a cross trainer gets me through 15 at a go. I was listening yesterday to one the Song Thrush- they usually start with recording of the song itself which goes on with few thoughts or facts. In this case a quote from Robert Browning - "Thats the wise thrush he repeats each song twice over, lest you should think he never could recapture, that first fine careless rapture" from a poem "Home Thoughts From Abroad". Well it reminded me that I had stopped and sat on a rather damp stone to try and take a series of shots while this bird was feeding at Conwy RSPB. And they do repeat each song phrase 2-3 times - each bird has a repetoire of around a hundred phrases that are mixed and matched to produce its song.

This brings me on to my second recent podcast habit - The Best of BBC Wildlife podcasts. There is a rich mine of material going right back to 2010 (almost like this site :-) ) and one of the first 30 minute episodes of "Saving Species" I listened to was basically a short magazine programme with one section on "Vis Mig" or visable migration to you non-birders. It was great to hear the voice of Ian Wallace who is a grand old duke of British Birding - a writer and  a quite a splendid bird artist - detailing the great London migration count for the Autumn I think of 1965. A group of birders took up spots across London in a human chain every weekday for 30 minutes and at the weekend for an hour. His post was on Kite Hill in Regents Park - a place he could get out to from his office at lunchtime. Anyway by a fairly scientific process they reckoned that 20 million birds flew over London that Autumn representing some 70 species. So heres the thing - it not just Swallows, Reed Warblers and so on - the obvious Summer migrants who migrate. Its not the obvious Winter Migrants also like geese, ducks and Winter Thrushes such as Redwings and Fieldfares. Many many species migrate - perhaps not huge journeys but perhaps just across from a frozen continental Europe a few hundred miles South and East towards the milder weather. Ordinary birds as well - chaffinches, wood pigeons, blackbirds.. yes and you guessed it Song Thrushes.

There are 20 million Song Thrushes across Europe or the Western Paleartic as we call the plate that broadly carves up one big bird area. Perhaps 14 million of those Song Thrushes (and this is my guess extrapolated from a study that showed that close to 70 % of British Song Thrushes migrate in some form - i.e. do not hold a territory all the time) migrate in some form. The map of Song Thrush distribution show a huge swathe of the Old World right up across Northern Europe, Scandinavia and across into Russia and Central Asia marked as Summer territories only for these birds. About half perhaps of the available land of the whole range hence my estimation that 70 % of the total population perhaps migrate is they are based in areas where digging up a worm is pretty difficult in a hard Winter.  These great Winter movements away from harsh weather happen in increments and every day. Sometimes in  great flurries and at other time are hardly noticeable. Great pulses of millions of birds flooding away from an icy death.

Iain Wallace has written a great book - illustrated by dozens of his paintings called "Beguiled by Birds". I frightened myself checking when my wife bought it for me just now - 2004 ! The year we moved from London up to Manchester - there is usually a little inscription in the front page of books bought as gifts - and this one has written " O to Twitch, perchance to sketch" - I think I was dabbling with trying to draw birds back then. Really me plus a set of childrens coloured pencils is quite a thing. I am very fond of some of my old illustrated bird notes but I think the camera is an improvement.

So as we journey on with this photographic journey we will come across 177 species of thrush if I get it right. Most of them are birds of our cold North - just 17 species - think about the opportunities to feed in the leaf litter for insects and worms and to gorge yourself on berries and it is self evident that the tropics are probably a better bet. The thing about the 300 hundred thing is that I just can't help having a small retrospective on how I am doing so - here are some thrushes I have captured on film so far click the links - a gorgeous Rock Thrush  at a mountain hotel in Al Ain - a secretive Orange-Headed Thrush in an ancient hill-top palace garden in Southern India and finally this Spotted Morning Thrush (Spotted Palm Thrush) from a game drive in Northern Tanzania. I would look again at thrushes - great migrants - great colouration - from the deepest Congo to mountains in the Andes - across to Australia - the deserts - the frozen North and the jungles of Asia. Time to get birding again. I see 2014 as a come back year after a poor 2013. A big fat Mistle Thrush is needed for starters - a Fieldfare and a Redwing.

Song Thrush, Turdus Philomelos
Conwy RSPB
Boxing Day 2013