Bird Identification Please

[Billhook]

This bird has been following me around the woods.  I never see it but it is as loud as a Thrush.  I am not bad on my bird ID I suspect it is a Nuthatch since I never see it and it is very furtive. But it does not sound quite like the Nuthatch on the google recording.  Perhaps it has a Lincolnshire accent!

There are a pair on our bird feeder so I know they are about, but I have never heard them sing from there.

[the village idiot]

That's a bit of a puzzler! Maybe a Mistle Thrush?

[Mick Dempsey]

Sounds like a warbler, willow or blackcap.

[Stubby]

Blackcap is a good shout . Cock bird . Maybe a White Throat ?

Edited February 2, 2021 by Stubby

[Billhook]

I have heard Mistle Thrushes all my life and yes they can be sometimes non melodic but at this time of year I would expect to see a relatively large bird in the tops of a tree or at least flying away from me.  I tried to follow the sound and it keeps moving but I never see the bird

Blackcap much more tuneful warble, white throat the same much more musical

Nuthatch is loud enough and furtive enough but it is not quite right unless as I said they have different accents in different places 

 

[Billhook]

I suppose it could be a furtive Mistle Thrush, but unlike any other I have heard and I would expect to have seen it.  Two of us have been working in the woods in the last weeks and on three or four occasions we have stopped work to try and see it but never have.  The man I work with is an ex game keeper and he is no wiser.

 

[Saw-sick Steve]

That's a Mistle Thrush, 100%

[Stubby]

10 minutes ago, Saw-sick Steve said:

That's a Mistle Thrush, 100%

Well done , bang on by the sound of it .

[Billhook]

I agree now and have been thinking that thrushes in general are rarely seen these days, unlike when I was growing up in the 1960s when they were often seen out in the middle of a lawn, head cocked over listening for worms, or picking up snails and taking them to their Thrushes anvil.

I think that DDT in the 1950s  had nailed many of the raptors, especially Sparrow Hawks but also there was a lot of game keeping controlling  populations of Magpies, Jays, Carrion Crows as well as Stoats,, Weasels and Foxes.

With DDT banned, he rise of all these predators has seen a decline in British small birds and the ones that have survived have developed  Darwinian methods to avoid detection.  The Mistle Thrush is no longer seen exposed and must be darting along through the insides of hedges.

In the last few years I have witnessed several attacks on my bird feeder by Sparrow Hawks and also seen a cloud of feathers in the middle of the lawn.  I opened the steel door of the tractor shed a few days ago and in the time it took me to drive to the workshop, a Sparrow Hawk had flown into the shed and nailed a feral pigeon which was still leaking fresh blood from its severed head on my return

[the village idiot]

They're a red list species now so great that you have them. (Mistle thrush)

Edited February 3, 2021 by the village idiot