Now that the cold-weather ‘Beast from the East’, a freezing Arctic blast, has passed and been replaced with much milder temperatures, the birds have decided it’s spring.

This week I’ve heard Song thrushes and Blackbirds belting out their tunes from the treetops, Dunnocks singing from the bushes, male Greenfinches wheezing a welcome to prospective mates, and Skylarks songflighting above the local farm fields, which is all wonderful, but it also means the thrushes that have been over-wintering in Britain will be heading back to their breeding grounds.

These Fieldfares are probably the last I’ll see, until the winter thrushes return again later in the year. They may already have started their long flight back east, to the Scandinavian peninsula, Finland or northwest Russia, according to the BTO website.