Country diary: The redwing is bird-brained, but far from stupid | Paul Evans

The Marches, Shropshire: If we could look inside the head of this fearless redwing as it defends its store of rowanberries, what would we find? A redwing chases a blackbird through the drizzle, away from a group of rowans and over the hedge north with an emphatic "and don't come back" cackle before veering off to resume guardianship. It will. During the cold snap, the redwing-rowanberry drama was muted, the ground bone-hard, every fruit frozen, the birds sitting it out. Now there's a thaw, the redwing is resuming security patrols around trees with remaining rowanberries.Since they arrived from Scandinavia or Iceland some weeks ago, the redwings have been snaffling berries, but this group of mountain ash - rowan, rune, ran, roan, royne or, over the border, criafol - have been left to ripen. It's a great year for fruit and seed and these trees, planted in recent years, are loaded with berries. Perhaps the birds find them particularly good when they're frosted and this may be why this individual redwing has been going to such lengths to protect the crop until it peaks. Continue reading...