It is a very rare breeder in the British Isles, but winters in large numbers in the United Kingdom, Southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

It is omnivorous, eating a wide range of molluscs, insects and earthworms in the summer, and berries, grain and seeds in the winter.

The fieldfare is 25 cm (10 in) long, with a grey crown, neck and rump, a plain brown back, dark wings and tail and white underwings.

Nearly 90 species of medium to large thrushes are in the genus Turdus, characterised by rounded heads, longish, pointed wings, and usually melodious songs.

[2] The fieldfare was described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in his landmark 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae under its current scientific name.

[3] Linnaeus specified the type locality as Europe but this was restricted to Sweden by the German orthithologist Ernst Hartert in 1910.

[9] The fieldfare is easily recognisable with its slate-grey head, nape and rump, dark brown back, blackish tail and boldly speckled breast.

When angry or alarmed they emit various warning sounds reminiscent of the mistle thrush (Turdus viscivorus).

It is a mixture of a few phrases like those of the common blackbird (Turdus merula) interspersed with whistles, guttural squeaks and call notes.

It breeds in northern Norway, northern Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Siberia as far east as Transbaikal, the Aldan River and the Tian Shan Mountains in North West China.

Its winter range extends through western and southern Europe to North Africa, though it is uncommon in the Mediterranean region.

It is highly gregarious, quite shy and easily scared in the winter and bold and noisy in the breeding season.

[13] When foraging on the ground, often in association with redwings, the group works its way up wind, each bird pausing every so often to stand erect and gaze around before resuming feeding.

[13] In woodland they do not skulk in the undergrowth as do blackbirds or song thrushes, instead they perch in the open on bushes and high branches.

Common sites are in rough grass among bushes or clumps of rushes, in young plantations, on stubble and in the furrows of ploughed fields.

[11] In the summer, the fieldfare frequents mixed woodland of birch, alder, pine, spruce and fir, often near marshes, moorland or other open ground.

[10] Migration southwards from the breeding range starts in October but the bulk of birds arrive in the United Kingdom in November.

Animal food in the diet includes snails and slugs, earthworms, spiders and insects such as beetles and their larvae, flies and grasshoppers.

Hawthorn, holly, rowan, yew, juniper, dog rose, Cotoneaster, Pyracantha and Berberis are all relished.

They are usually ready to leave the nest after fourteen to sixteen days and there may be two broods in the season, especially in the southern parts of the breeding range.