As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Friday, 27 February 2015

Rare European fieldfare visits Cumberland County couple

Its heart is smaller than a dime.

The Atlantic Ocean is vast and cold.

But somehow a small songbird, a European fieldfare, crossed all that dark water to land in an apple tree in Apple River, Cumberland County, on Saturday.

Kathleen Spicer and her husband Blaine have been keeping tabs on it ever since.

On Tuesday morning, Spicer was holding her 20-month-old great-granddaughter, Serenity, and hoping to see it again.

“It hailed last night and the birds in the yard are all covered in ice,” she said over the phone. “I’m concerned for it.”

The fieldfare, about the size of a robin and a member of the thrush family, is well equipped for winter.

The migratory bird breeds regularly as far north as Iceland and is sometimes seen in Greenland.

The Spicers’ fieldfare, however, is only the second one photographed in Nova Scotia — the other was in Granville Ferry, Annapolis County, in 1994.

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