Fieldfare

The Fieldfare nipped into a roadside bush to hide as I got closer, but I could still just about see enough of it to photograph. As you can see, its looking slightly ruffled(!). My field guide describes it as a large handsome thrush with a striking combination of plumage colours, which seems about right :-)

Walking across the fields I finally worked out what the small brown ground feeding birds were that have been moving around in flocks.  They're about the size of sparrows so I thought that they might be linnets, but none of them quite had the right colouring for linnets.  It turns out that they are Twites , which is quite similar to a Linnet.  

Getting a decent picture of them has proved beyond me just at the moment.  I just can't get close enough to them.  When they move as a flock in the air they're just too small to be able to lock onto a single individual to reliably grab focus of, and there's enough of them that you really need more depth of field than I have available at that distance.  

Just so you can see what I'm on about I've added an extra which is a rubbish shot and a frankly dismal attempt on my part, assisted by the fact that they had a couple of starlings with them and I was able to focus on one of the starlings.   If you can't see the extra shot, it will be because I've taken it down to use the allowance for something else as I'm rapidly running out of extras.