The redwings are too busy eating to sing

Airedale, West Yorkshire Far from being robust birds, these visitors from Scandinavia can suffer terribly when the temperature drops

The little grebes have changed into their smart off-season outfits - smoky-brown, with a dark cap worn low on the brow - and moved upriver, westward, to winter with us. The quickening of the current has brought a dipper down from the river's higher reaches. In a hawthorn that overhangs the water, redwings gorge on the dull red fruit.

These aren't the first redwings I've seen this season: since the turn of October they've been skipping through high overhead in threes and fours and fives, calling seep, seep. The warden, hunkered in the adjoining meadow on autumn "vismigging" (visible migrant) duty, pointed out to me their distinctively irregular wingbeats.