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Redwing – Turdus iliacus

Redwing – Turdus liacus
It is 20–24 cm long with a wingspan of 33–34.5 cm and a weight of 50–75 g. The sexes are similar, with plain brown backs and with dark brown spots on the white underparts. The most striking identification features are the red flanks and underwing, and the creamy white stripe above the eye.

Migrating and wintering birds often form loose flocks of 10 to 200 or more birds, often feeding together with fieldfares, common blackbirds, and starlings, sometimes also with mistle thrushes, song thrushes, and ring ouzels. Unlike the song thrush, the more nomadic redwing does not tend to return regularly to the same wintering areas.

It breeds in northern regions of Europe and Asia, from Iceland south to northernmost Scotland, and east through Scandinavia, the Baltic States, northern Poland and Belarus, and through most of Russia to about 165°E in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. In recent years it has expanded its range slightly, both in eastern Europe where it now breeds south into northern Ukraine, and in southern Greenland, where the Qaqortoq area was colonised in 1990–1991. It is omnivorous, eating a wide range of insects and earthworms all year, supplemented by berries in autumn and winter

This is the beautiful song

Recording by maudoc from Xeno-canto