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Fieldfare | Turdus pilaris
Kramsvogel | Zorzal real
The Fieldfare is a large, colourful northern thrush that reaches the region only in winter and far from every year. In mild winters it is almost absent; after severe cold in Europe and Turkey flocks appear in the mountains of the Levant and northern Iraq, and more scarcely in the Maghreb.
Voice
The call is a hard, chuckling chak-chak-chak, especially when a flock takes off; also a nasal gee. The song, rarely heard in the region, is a chatter of hoarse and scratchy notes.
Recording: Cedric Mroczko — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
22–27 cm. Large, long-tailed and colourful. Head, nape and rump are blue-grey, mantle and wing coverts chestnut-brown, tail blackish. A faint pale supercilium above the eye and dark lores. Throat and breast ochre-yellow with heavy black spots and arrowhead markings continuing onto the flanks; belly white. The underwing is bright white. Bill yellow with a dark tip. Flies in loose flocks with a slightly undulating flight.
Confusion species
Mistle Thrush (Turdus viscivorus) also has a white underwing, but is plain grey-brown above without grey head and rump, and has white tail corners. Black-throated Thrush (Turdus atrogularis) is plain grey-brown above with a rusty underwing. Young Ring Ouzels (Turdus torquatus) are dark and scaly, without a grey rump.
Habitat
In winter open fields, pastures and fallow land with short grass, orchards, olive groves and berry-bearing scrub, often in the mountains and on plateaus. Forages in flocks on the ground for worms and insects, and in frost and snow seeks out berry-bearing shrubs.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the habitats of North Africa and the Middle East.
Range and movements
Irregular winter visitor to Lebanon, Syria, northern Israel (mainly Hermon and the Golan), the highlands of Jordan and northern Iraq, in flocks in irruption years. Scarce and irregular in northern Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. In Libya, Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula (including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Oman) a vagrant. Breeds from central and northern Europe to eastern Siberia; winters mainly in western, central and southern Europe and Turkey.
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
The chance is best after a cold spell in Turkey or the Balkans: search the orchards and fields of the Golan, Hermon or the Bekaa Valley for flocks of thrushes and listen for the chuckling chak-chak.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened. Declining in parts of Europe; in the region numbers are variable and usually small, and are also hunted during irruptions.
Scientific name
Turdus pilaris | Linnaeus, 1758
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. He introduced the genus Turdus in that same work. Turdus is the ordinary Latin word for 'thrush'. pilaris is a second Latin word for 'thrush', so the scientific name says the same thing twice. The specimen the first description was based on came from Sweden.