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Look at the face and the flanks. A redwing is the smallest, with a bold cream stripe over the eye and a rusty-red patch under the wing. A fieldfare is big, with a grey head, grey rump and chestnut back. A song thrush has a plain face, neat arrow-shaped spots and a warm buff wash under the wing. A mistle thrush is larger and greyer, with bold round spots and white tail corners. Redwings and fieldfares are winter visitors, arriving from Scandinavia from October.
- Redwing: ~21 cm, cream eyebrow, red flanks. Winter visitor.
- Fieldfare: ~25 cm, grey head and rump, chestnut back. Winter visitor.
- Song thrush: ~23 cm, plain face, small dark spots. Resident.
- Mistle thrush: ~27 cm, pale grey-brown, big round spots. Resident.
- Winter food: berries, windfall apples, worms on open lawns.
The side-by-side table
| Redwing | Fieldfare | Song thrush | Mistle thrush | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Size | Smallest | Blackbird-sized or bigger | Smaller than a blackbird | Largest |
| Face | Cream stripe over eye and below cheek | Grey head, pale eyebrow | Plain, gentle face | Pale, plain, slightly mottled |
| Under the wing | Brick-red flank patch | Orange-buff breast | Warm buff/orange underwing | White underwing |
| Spots | Streaks, not spots | Dense dark chevrons | Neat arrow-shaped spots | Large, round, scattered spots |
| Back | Plain brown | Chestnut, with grey rump | Warm brown | Grey-brown |
| When | Oct–Mar | Oct–Apr | All year | All year |
| Call | Thin “tseep”, often at night in autumn | Harsh “chack-chack” | Short “tsip” | Dry rattle, like a football rattle |
Redwing
The redwing is the one most often mistaken for a song thrush. The giveaway is the stripy face — a creamy eyebrow above the eye and a pale stripe below the cheek — and the rusty-red patch on the flank, which is easiest to see when the bird lifts its wing. Redwings travel in flocks, often mixed with fieldfares, and strip berry bushes fast. On autumn nights you can hear their thin “tseep” calls overhead as they migrate in.
Fieldfare
Fieldfares are big, noisy and flighty. The grey head and pale grey rump contrast with a chestnut back — the rump is obvious when they fly off. They’re mainly birds of fields and hedgerows, but in cold snaps and snow they come into gardens for apples and can be surprisingly aggressive, guarding a windfall from blackbirds.
Song thrush
The song thrush is our resident garden thrush: warm brown, with neat dark spots shaped like little arrowheads on a cream-to-buff breast. It’s famous for smashing snails on a stone “anvil”. It sings from late winter, repeating each phrase two or three times. Numbers have declined sharply since the 1970s.
Mistle thrush
Bigger, paler and more upright than a song thrush, with large round spots and white tips to the outer tail feathers in flight. In winter a single mistle thrush will guard a holly or mistletoe bush and chase away every other bird — including redwings and fieldfares.
Quick memory trick: Redwing has red under the wing. Fieldfare is the grey-headed one in the fields. Song thrush has small, tidy spots. Mistle thrush has big, messy ones.
How to attract winter thrushes
- Windfall apples: save them in a cool shed and put a few out, halved, on the lawn in cold weather — the single best food for fieldfares and redwings.
- Berry shrubs: holly, rowan, hawthorn, cotoneaster, pyracantha and ivy.
- Leave the lawn and leaf litter: worms and invertebrates are a big part of their diet.
- Suet and soaked sultanas scattered on the ground in freezing weather.
Sultanas and raisins are toxic to dogs. Don’t scatter dried fruit where a dog can get to it.
Common questions
Where do redwings and fieldfares come from?
Mainly Scandinavia, Finland and Russia, with some redwings from Iceland. They come to Britain for our milder winters.
Why have lots of thrushes suddenly appeared in snow?
Hard weather pushes redwings and fieldfares out of frozen fields into gardens and towns, where there’s still fruit and unfrozen ground.
Is a juvenile blackbird a thrush?
Yes, blackbirds are thrushes, and young ones are spotty and brown in summer. By winter they’ve moulted, so a spotty bird in December isn’t a young blackbird.
Do redwings breed in the UK?
Only a handful of pairs, mainly in Scotland. Almost all the redwings you see are winter visitors.
Related guides
- Song thrush guide
- Winter visitors to UK gardens
- Brown birds in UK gardens: an ID guide
- How to help birds in freezing weather
Sources: BTO BirdFacts; RSPB species profiles for redwing, fieldfare, song thrush and mistle thrush; BTO Garden BirdWatch.
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