COUNTRY LIFE
I Have received a number of reports of the wide distribution of fieldfares or " felties" this winter, and this week I saw a small flock in the pasture bordering my kitchen-garden. They are usually regarded as foreboding severe weather, presumably because they are nomadic rather than strictly migratory from their nesting haunts in southern Scandinavia. But since they travel here from Norway, though irregularly as to times and numbers, every autumn and winter, there can be no prognostication of ice and snow following at their heels. They are conspicuous, bold, noisy, grey and brown birds, distinguishable from our tnissel-thrush by blue-grey rumps, boisterous chacking notes and love of company. They enliven the low tones of the winter fields by a certain bravura in movement and sociability which in the missel-thrush is expressed from the nature and in the pose of its stormy song.
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