Francis Hickenbottom’s Nature Notes.
26th December 2009 2009
Here in Hemsworth, a covering of several centimetres of snow remained for Christmas day and temperatures were low, resulting in a hard freeze.
I always put out food for the birds: mixed seed with insects, nyjer seed for the goldfinches, suet ‘cake’, suet ‘treats’ and sultanas. I provide the sultanas for the blackbirds but recently they have found another favourite. In the past few days, blackbirds have been feeding on the fruit of my crab apple tree, a Malus ‘Everest’.
This variety of crab apple produces masses of blossom in spring and many apples,
each about the size of a large cherry, later in the year. The apples are quite hard
and are a bit too large for blackbirds to swallow. However, the recent sub-
Blackbirds have descended on the tree in large numbers and have been pecking at the fruits, leaving many of them looking tattered and the ground beneath the tree strewn with skins and fragments of apples. I have counted as many as thirteen blackbirds in the small area around the tree.
In addition, on Christmas Eve, the tree attracted a fieldfare which flew down and took some of the fruit. I often see fieldfares flying over during the winter and they sometimes perch in the tall ash tree which grows in the front of the house but this is the first occasion on which I have seen a fieldfare come down into the garden.