Redwings foraging in Reykjavik city centre and Laugavegur Street, Iceland
Laugavegur Street is the main shopping street in Reykjavik, full of coffee shops, touristy gift shops, wine bars, cake shops and more. It was very busy in November when I was there. It was pedestrianised in parts which was useful. Other than a few single trees dotted along the pavement, there were no large trees or hedgerows in this area at all to attract birds after berries. I was very surprised to see redwings in the street and as you will see in the film their behaviour I thought it worthy of filming as to me it was so unusual. I did not see this behaviour in any other place I visited in Iceland outside of the capital.
The RSPB describe the redwing as usually a winter visitor and is the UK’s smallest true thrush. Look for the creamy strip above its eye and the orange-red flank patches. They roam across the UK’s countryside, feeding in fields and hedgerows, rarely visiting gardens, except in the coldest weather when snow covers the fields. Only a few pairs nest in the UK.
The BTO continue during the early winter the Redwing is very much a bird of open country but during freezing conditions, redwings can often be seen in parks and gardens. With birds arriving from both Iceland and Fennoscandia. Redwings can be found across Britain & Ireland during the winter months. These birds tough it out here.
My own experience of redwings
My own experiences of redwings in the UK are that they and fieldfares arrive in the UK as flocks and feed in hedgerows, berry-bearing trees, farmland copses, fields, etc. They are very shy birds and quickly fly away if you approach them. Then when the weather turns much colder and the ground freezes you may see them in rural, suburban gardens and possibly urban parklands that have suitable forage for them, being berries or soil invertebrates weather permitting. When they eventually do venture into more urban/suburban areas, you can attract them to your gardens by having a pile of sliced or bruised apples on your lawn. These will also attract song thrushes and blackbirds.
Two redwing species
Two subtly distinct types of redwing are known to visit the UK from autumn through to spring. Besides Turdus iliacus species being present in Iceland, another species of redwing T.i. Coburni. also lives there, in fact, it lives and breeds there as well as in the Faroe Isles. It too is a migratory bird that moves south to the British Isles and Europe. According to the British Trust for Ornithology, you are most likely to see these slightly larger and darker-coloured T.i coburni species in the west of Britain and Ireland, where they overwinter. Although both species are omnivorous, when migrating, due to weather conditions and there being little or no soil invertebrate prey items available, e.g. earthworms, they become frugivorous.
Completely different behaviour
I was really surprised to see redwings on the pavements not only on the busy pavement with people walking next to them but also feeding on food thrown by people on the pavement and into plant troughs. They were competing with blackbirds, starlings and just one ∗house sparrow∗ (See below). Like our house sparrows, the redwings were fearless around people, prams and wheelchairs, even electric scooters! I had never seen this before nor had I expected to see this at all. They fought over scraps of food. I did not see this behaviour in any other places I visited in Iceland.
Artificial Light
Besides food, perhaps another reason attracted these birds to the busy city centre. Research has found that thrushes, including redwings, are attracted to artificial light at night (ALAN) and Reykjavik is a seaport and a city with more lights than the surrounding countryside. Perhaps the lights attracted them to have an overnight stopover and then they went foraging before they continued with their migration. Who knows?
In a study by Guiten et all (1994) In Iceland the crowberry, (Empetrum nigrum), European blueberry (Vaccinium myrtillus) bog bilberry (Vaccinium uliginosum) and bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi) were very popular. They also found that these berries were patchily distributed amongst other plants. I would suspect that Iceland has unusual environmental conditions with its erosion-prone volcanic soils, harsh climate, depth of snow/ice, forest clearances and grazing somewhat limits the availability of enough berries to sustain both species of redwings hence they fatten up on the available food before migrating south. However, I cannot say which species it was that I filmed. Although I suspect the T.i. coburni species. See more about the two species here
Value of hedgerow fruits
Food from hedgerow fruits, such as berries, sloes, haws and crab apples, provide a valuable resource for several UK farmland bird species from late summer, through winter and into spring. Jacobs states that although these birds are omnivorous, due to the reduced or complete unavailability of invertebrate prey items, supplement their diet with such fruits to maintain their energy, switching back to soil invertebrates when the fruit supply is exhausted. The flesh of hedgerow fruits is nutritious, containing lipids, protein and carbohydrates and topped up with a small amount of invertebrates, when available, could help these birds build up fat reserves.
UV light advertiser!
Siitari et al state that the fruits within hedgerows and trees, have to be seen by the birds and need to be visually attractive to them as ultimately, the birds are the dispersers of their seeds. Thus ripened fruits have evolved bright colours to attract the birds which can be seen against a background of green foliage for some considerable distance. Red or black, both colours being favoured by birds on the lookout for ripened berries. Some fruits with a waxy coating, such as blue, violet and blackberries may also reflect ultraviolet light further advertising them to birds that have through age or have learnt, that such berries are ripe. The advert clearly states “Eat me. I am ripe!” Naive birds show no preference for such berries and probably learn by social learning, observation or hunger-driven sampling.
Kestrels and hunting
I often wondered how kestrels (Falco tinnunculus) found their vole prey amongst all the ground vegetation. In his fine book, “The Kestrel” Andrew Village states that their flight-hunting hovering technique is its most familiar feature. They also hunt from perches. They use their sharp talons and strong beaks, making full use of their keen eyesight. We know little about the kestrel’s visual perception. He was right of course. Well since its publication in 1990, science has moved on. I was under the impression that it was their keen eyesight and their ability to detect the slightest movement which located their prey items. This is correct but another method is used by them which greatly augments their senses/ability somewhat.
UV light helps kestrels
Viitala et al. were the first to show that kestrels can see UV light in the presence of urine and faeces but not in visible light, along the male vole runways as they scent mark them. Koivula et al went on to find that male voles would leave fine trace urination marks and droppings all over their trail system within their home range, whereas females and juveniles may try to hide their urine and faeces. So the UV light shows where the male voles are most active when they scent mark and are more likely to be predated.
You may find this paper about artificial coloured lights and their effect on migrating birds interesting.
∗House sparrow in Iceland?
As mentioned I saw nothing unusual that merited filming a house sparrow waiting around some food scraps. Later I realised that even though I had travelled to other places in Iceland, I saw no sparrows whatsoever. I thought I had better check and I emailed Birdlife Iceland.
I explained that I could easily identify a house sparrow having undertaken numerous surveys for the RSPB and BTO. I intended to film the Redwing’s behaviour and never gave the house sparrow a second thought, so I never filmed it! Well, my sighting generated quite some interest! Anna-María Lind Geirsdóttir from Birdlife forwarded my email to the Icelandic Rarities Committee, and I received this reply from Yann Kolbbeinsson of that organisation.
Dear George,
The only recent colony of House Sparrows in Iceland went extinct in 2016. That was the colony at a cluster of farms at Hof, just over 80 km southwest of Höfn.
There are only two records from Reykjavík.
- A pair in 1959 bred and raised 4 young but the whole family was subsequently collected. This was also the first record of this species in Iceland.+
- Three birds were found in late 1968, with some being seen into summer 1969 They were considered to have come with a cargo ship to the city and are therefore not included in the species‘ tally of Icelandic records.
Your sighting of a single bird in Reykjavík is thus of great interest. Could you please send a detailed report of the bird and how other small passerines were excluded, circumstances of the observation, optics used etc, as this record would need to be reviewed by the Icelandic Rarities Committee.
Let me know if you have further questions.
Regards
Yann (member of the Icelandic Rarities Committee)
References and my observations
With special thanks to Anna-María Lind Geirsdóttir from Birdlife and Yann Kolbbeinsson of the Icelandic Rarities Committee
Jacobs, J.H (2008)”The birds and the bees: pollination of fruit-bearing hedgerow plants and consequences for birds” PhD thesis Stirling
Nocturnal flight calling behaviour of thrushes in relation to artificial light at night
Snow and Snow (1988) Birds and Berries. T. & A. D. Poyser, Calton
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