November's Birds in Ashtead

The days may be getting shorter and the weather colder, yet we're approaching one of the best times of the year for bird watching. The reason is that, starting with Ashtead's famous ashes, the trees are losing their leaves, making birds much easier to see. Those to look out for include robins, wrens, blackbirds, dunnocks, titmice, finches, nuthatches and woodpeckers. Keep an eye out, too, for those winter visitors, the redwings and fieldfares, here from Scandinavia to enjoy our comparatively mild winters. The former are rather like the song thrush but smaller and having
distinctively rust coloured flanks, the latter similar to the mistle thrush but much more gregarious. Both species visit gardens at this time of year to feed on berries and fallen apples.