Fieldfare thrushes: How to deal with the most harmful birds in the country

What meth­ods will help in the fight against rowan thrush­es? And what does plush toys and Carl­son have to do with it? Andrey Tumanov, chair­man of the All-Russ­ian orga­ni­za­tion “Gar­den­ers of Rus­sia”, answered these ques­tions of 5‑tv.ru.

How to distinguish fieldfare thrushes from other birds

The field­fare thrush is a very com­mon bird in cen­tral Rus­sia. From oth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the fam­i­ly of thrush field­fare, their lifestyle dis­tin­guish­es them.

Although some pairs may nest sep­a­rate­ly, in most cas­es field­fare gath­er in medi­um-sized colonies of about 30–40 pairs. They like to set­tle in park plant­i­ngs and in copses, along the edges of forests, clos­er to wet mead­ows. Field­fare is not found in dense forests.

Out­ward­ly, field­fare is a medi­um-sized bird, with an aver­age body length of about 25 cm. The plumage of the back is dark brown, and the abdomen and under­wings are white. The wings and tail are black­ish-brown, the chest and sides are buffy with dark streaks. Field­fare thrush­es are quite well-fed birds, notes Tumanov.

“This is such a fat, sleek bird, which is like a lit­tle chick­en,” says the expert.

Real scouts

Accord­ing to Andrei Tumanov, field­fare — thrush­es are very cun­ning and smart. Due to the fact that they set­tle and live in flocks, it is very incon­ve­nient for them to seek food for them­selves all togeth­er, leav­ing the colony.

For this rea­son, rowan thrush­es use recon­nais­sance. Before arrang­ing a raid on the next rowan tree, vine or fresh­ly picked berries left unat­tend­ed, the thrush­es first send out scouts.

“Here you are in the gar­den, and sud­den­ly, some­where on the wires, two rowan thrush­es are sit­ting and pre­tend­ing that they are here by chance, just whistling. Tumanov says. “No, these are not just thrush­es — they are scouts sent out by a flock.”

That is, the flock sends out two scouts who observe if there is some­thing they need. Some­where straw­ber­ries ripened, some­where rasp­ber­ries. Where is the own­er? Does the own­er walk around here or did he go to watch TV?

If the scout thrush­es see that the own­er is busy with his own busi­ness, and no one is guard­ing the berries, they whis­tle a sig­nal to the whole flock, which is capa­ble of instant­ly dev­as­tat­ing every­thing.

How to deal with field thrushes

Since the flock arrives only when intel­li­gence “gives the go-ahead”, the only effec­tive method of deal­ing with harm­ful birds is to cre­ate the appear­ance that a valu­able crop is always under obser­va­tion.

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In this case, all sorts of scare­crows are very help­ful. How­ev­er, Tumanov notes that scare­crows should not be banal and sta­t­ic; you can­not deceive cun­ning birds with this.

“[Помогают — Прим. ред.] well, dif­fer­ent, prefer­ably non-stan­dard scare­crows, prefer­ably some kind of mov­ing ones. Tumanov says. “If you some­how move the scare­crows, con­stant­ly change their loca­tions, then here the birds will look with cau­tion.”

He not­ed that he uses all sorts of soft toys as scare­crows that can be plant­ed in trees to arouse bewil­der­ment and fear in birds. Most like­ly, they will con­sid­er fly­ing around ted­dy bears, tigers and oth­er ani­mals sit­ting on branch­es.

Sep­a­rate­ly, Andrey Tumanov sin­gles out his plush Carl­son, whose “sly look” is able to scare not only field­fare thrush­es, but also crows and even him­self.

“I myself some­times get scared of him when I acci­den­tal­ly stum­ble, I look a lit­tle like me in terms of com­plex­ion,” the gar­den­er jokes.

Feel sorry for the bird?

Some read­ers may have a ques­tion: why not feed the poor hun­gry birds? As a rule, this ques­tion is usu­al­ly asked by the female half of the pop­u­la­tion, the expert empha­sizes. How­ev­er, no mat­ter how cute and harm­less the field­fare may seem, they should nev­er be fed. There are now more field thrush­es than all our gar­dens can feed. If you give them free rein, they will eat all the crops if they wish, Tumanov warns.

“You can’t shoot, but you can scare away,” the expert empha­sizes.

Ear­li­er, Tumanov told how to prop­er­ly water plants in the sum­mer in the coun­try.