Winter thrushes

With the exception of the ring ouzel, you can find all our thrushes in winter, and they are quite easy to identify. All are small to medium sized birds with an upright stance, often found feeding on the ground.

Around 1.4 million redwings and fieldfares visit Britain each year from Scandinavia and farther east. Blackbirds, song thrushes and mistle thrushes are with us all year, but your spring blackbird family may head south and west for winter before returning. It may be replaced in your winter garden by Fennoscandian relatives.

Top tips - Spot the difference

Blackbirds and ring ouzels

Blackbirds are either entirely black (male), with a black or yellow beak or dark brown (female), sometimes with a bit of pale speckling on the throat. Small numbers of the much rarer ring ouzel pass through in migration. They are slightly bigger than blackbirds with a silvery sheen to the wings and a large and distinctive pale chest crescent. Even on females this is much more obvious than on any blackbird. Ring ouzels head to the hills to breed.

Male blackbird feeding on orange rowan berries

Image by Margaret Holland

Image by Margaret Holland

Image by Margaret Holland

Song and mistle thrushes

Song thrushes have neat rows of black arrow-shaped spots on a warm, creamy coloured breast and plain warm brown head and upperparts. If you see a thrush bashing a snail on a stone, it will be a song thrush. The song thrush has a beautiful song, full of repeated phrases.

Mistle thrushes are much bigger, with round, more random black spots on a paler, cool white background and greyer upperparts. They can look quite unkempt, and their slightly hoarse song reflects that.

Image by Vaughn Matthews

Image by Amy Lewis

Redwings and fieldfares

Structurally, redwings are most similar to song thrushes, but look even warmer with bright orangey-red flanks and a strong white eyebrow, giving them a bold, aggressive look. Their thin “seep” flight calls are distinctive.

Fieldfares are nearly as big as mistle thrushes, with black tails, and grey and brown patterned upperparts and more streaks than spots underneath. They are strong, bold-looking birds, that chunter “chak-chak” as they fly away.