Fieldfares

 Had my first good view this autumn of a fieldfare yesterday, feeding on hawthorn berries in the Tunstall valley, Weardale. I've seen and heard them in the distance over the last couple of weeks but it's surprisingly difficult to get close to these wary birds, that are always on the move. There's an excellent berry crop here this autumn, which should attract many more.

The pictures below are birds from earlier years. Once the hawthorn berry crop dwindles they become less wary, and when snow falls in winter they sometimes visit the garden to feed on crab apples. I always put old, damaged eating apples out for them in late winter. 

Redwings: there go the holly berry Christmas decorations

Over the last couple of weeks I've invested a lot of time in trying to creep close enough to redwings to get a decent picture. They are extremely wary birds, so most attempts have ended in failure. The three pictures below were the best I could manage.

Then, three days ago, this redwing (below) turned up on the holly outside our front door, just ten feet from the window. I'd estimate that it must have consumed at least a couple of hundred berries. So many that sometimes it just seemed to sit on the branch in a dazed state, rather like me after a heavy Christmas dinner.. 

By the end of this week, aided by several voracious blackbirds, it will have polished off all the berries that we planned to use as Christmas decorations.

Fieldfare feeding frenzy

Thousands of fieldfares, arriving from Scandinavia and Russia, have passed through Weardale over the last few weeks, gorging themselves with this year's heavy crop of hawthorn berries.

They have a methodical way of stripping off the haws, at an incredibly rapid rate.

First, the lunge ....

.... and then the grab ....

.... followed by a sharp twist and a tug to pull it from its stalk ...

.... then a brief pause followed by little toss of the head to send the berries down into the gullet. 

This one downed seven in under a minute

More about their feeding preferences in the Guardian Country Diary today 

Weardale in early summer: St. John's Chapel

Weardale is at its most beautiful in June.  These are a few photographs taken recently around the village of St. John's Chapel, in the middle of the dale.

Burnet rose, the most fragrant of all the native wild roses.

A single wood cranesbill plant in a sea of buttercups.

Meadows full of buttercups, seen from Chapel fell

A froth of cow parsley flowers along roadsides and around the edge of fields.

Hawthorn in bloom along the footpath beside the river Wear

Hawthorn still blooming beside Harthope burn. Water levels are low after a very dry spring.

Glorious hay meadows

Lady's mantle and wood cranesbill

Meadow foxtail grass in flower

Pignut's lacy umbels

Lambs fattening

Wood cranesbill

Blossom

From March until July, this has been the best for native tree blossom that I can recall in our part of the North Pennines. It started with sloe and is now coming to an end with elder. Here they are, in chronological sequence

Blackthorn aka Sloe

Wild cherry aka gean

Hawthorn

Bird cherry

Rowan aka mountain ash

Elder