On our daily walks across our local golf course during lockdown, we have been accompanied by a variety of characters and none sweeter than the mistle thrushes who appear in pairs bounding across the greens.
The mistle thrush gets its name from its love of mistletoe berries. Its Latin name is Turdus viscivorus, the latter of which means devourer of mistletoe. Despite mistletoe berries being an important food source for this bird in Europe, in the UK they prefer holly and hawthorn berries. Another name for this bird is ‘stormcock’ due to the way it will defend its territory by perching at the top of the tallest tree, even if that means getting blown about all over the place.
I’d spotted these birds when we first began taking our daily exercise on the golf course, but when my partner asked me what they were I was unsure; my gut said mistle thrush but, for some reason, I didn’t trust my initial assessment and wondered if they were song thrushes. Although they have steadily become more used to the people marching through their territories daily, they have mostly been careful to keep a good distance between themselves and the walkers so I didn’t try to get too close. However, one evening we saw one flushed from the trees by one of the patrolling buzzards and the alarm call it made was not something I’d heard before. Such a loud rattling call led me to identify it with certainty as a mistle thrush and, in hindsight, the differences in size and stature from the song thrush are easy to spot even from a distance.
As I’ve already noted, we have tended to spot these birds as they’ve been bounding away from us over the ground or bouncing away in flight to the nearest tree. To capture this image, I got a lucky break; I saw this bird disappear behind a tree, which allowed me to get close and then when it emerged I was in the perfect position to get the shot I wanted. The bird ended up approaching me!