FIELDFARE V 



TURDUS PILARIS Linnaeus 



FIELDFARE 



Contributed by Bernard William Tucker 



HABITS 



The fieldfare has been added to the American fauna since the 

 publication of the 1931 A. 0. U. list. In The Auk for 1940 (vol. 57) 

 P. A. Taverner described a specimen from the southeastern coast of 

 Jens Munk Island, at the head of Foxe Basin, Arctic America, taken 

 during the summer of 1939 and received by the National Museum of 

 Canada from Graham Rowley. "It is a roughly made, semi-mummi- 

 fied skin but quite complete and recognizable. Mr. Rowley found 

 it in the possession of an old Eskimo woman who recognized it as 

 unusual and was keeping it as a curiosity." Mr. Taverner believed 

 this to be the first record for the American list, but there is in fact 

 an earlier authentic record from Greenland. This refers to a male 

 shot on November 24, 1925, at Fiskenaesse on the southwest coast 

 and sent by K. H. Petersen, of Godthaab, along with the skins of 

 several other rarities, to H. Scheel (1927), by whom it was recorded. 

 This specimen was evidently subsequently set up and returned to the 

 Greenland Museum at Godthaab, for in a later article by K. Oldendow 

 (1933) it is recorded that a fieldfare, with the same data as above, is 

 preserved there and constitutes the first record for Greenland. A 

 photograph of a group of birds in the Museum is given on page 187, 

 including an unmistakable fieldfare, which is obviously the specimen 

 in question. A third record can now be added. C. G. and E. G. 

 Bird (1941) record that an adult male was obtained by a norwegian 

 trapper, Magne Raum, near Cape Humboldt on Ymer Island, north- 

 east Greenland, on January 20, 1937. This specimen is preserved in 

 the British Museum (Natural History). The records justly observe 

 that "this is a rather remarkable record, as January is, of course, one 

 of the dark months. The weather for three weeks previously had 

 been one long succession of snowstorms." They add the further note- 

 worthy point that several fieldfares appeared on the island of Jan 

 May en on the same date. 



The fieldfare, like its relative and frequent associate the red-winged 

 thrush, is a characteristic bird of the forest belt of northern Europe 

 and Asia. But although it ranges quite as far north as the redwing— 

 and indeed, in Europe at any rate, even a little farther— it also extends 

 considerably farther south, breeding locally in parts of central Europe. 

 Courtship.— The only observer who has described the courtship 

 behavior of the fieldfare appears to be E. J. M. Buxton, who contrib- 

 uted a note on the subject to the "Handbook of British Birds" (1938, 



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