Breeding birds: 4 – 16 pairs
Wintering birds: 690,000
Family: Thrushes And Allies
Redwings have grey-brown upperparts and pale buff underparts with orange flanks and underwing coverts. They have black streaks on their throats which continue down onto the breast and sides of the body.
The head is grey-brown and they have a prominent, long creamy-white supercilium, and a less distinct malar stripe. They have black bills with a yellow base, dark brown eyes, and pink legs and feet. Males and females look similar.
Juvenile redwings resemble adults but the upperparts have buff streaks and the underparts have heavier spots with less orange.
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Redwings breed between April and July, usually alone but will sometimes form small colonies. They build their nests on the ground, hidden in dense vegetation or sometimes in a low tree of bush. The nest is cup=shaped made from grass and twigs which is bound with mud and lined with finer grasses and leaves.
Redwings lay 4-6 pale blue eggs with reddish-brown marks. The female incubates the eggs for 10-14 days and chicks fledge 12-15 days after hatching but will still depend on the adult male for another two weeks.
Redwings eat a variety of invertebrates including flies, caterpillars, crickets, dragonflies, spiders and mayflies. During autumn will also eat fruit, berries and seeds, foraging on the ground to find their food.
Migrant redwings arrive in September and October, leaving the following March and April. They can be found all over the UK in open countryside but will come into parks and gardens when it is colder and will eat windfalls or from ground feeders. They often form flocks with fieldfares.
The first birds to be shown to find fruit using ultraviolet vision were redwings in an experiment where they could choose between UV-reflecting bilberries and bilberries that had been rubbed so they did not reflect the light.
