Turdus pilaris
The fieldfare is a member of the thrush family Turdidae. It breeds in woodland and scrub in northern Europe and across the Palearctic. It is strongly migratory, with many northern birds moving south during the winter. It is a very rare breeder in the British Isles, but winters in large numbers in the United Kingdom, Southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. It is omnivorous, eating a wide range of molluscs, insects and earthworms in the summer, and berries, grain and seeds in the winter.

Bengt Nyman from Vaxholm, Sweden · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- fieldfarePBDB
- Sits inside
- TurdusPBDB
- Diet
- insectivore, frugivorePBDB, for Turdidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Turdidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Turdidae
- Mass
- 105 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At least 117 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 129 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 774 ka to 0 Mya.
12 occurrences of Turdus pilaris on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
12 occurrences- Pleistocene83%
- Holocene17%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Turdus pilaris and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Turdus pilaris and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
206 taxa- Corvus monedula7 sites
- Lagopus muta7 sites
- Perdix perdix7 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos6 sites
- Lagopus lagopus6 sites
- Anas crecca5 sites
- Corvus corax5 sites
- Haliaeetus albicilla5 sites
- Turdus iliacus5 sites
- Turdus merula5 sites
- Turdus philomelos5 sites
- Anatidae4 sites
- Corvus corone4 sites
- Hirundo rustica4 sites
- Mareca penelope4 sites
- Pica pica4 sites
- Sturnus vulgaris4 sites
- Turdus viscivorus4 sites
- Accipiter nisus3 sites
- Anas3 sites
- Asio flammeus3 sites
- Aythya fuligula3 sites
- Columba palumbus3 sites
- Coturnix coturnix3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 12 sites for Turdus pilaris, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
7 references- A catalogue of British Pleistocene birds identified by Colin JO Harrison and stored in the Natural History Museum, London, (Department of Palaeontology)3
- Bird remains from Curata and Bordu Mare caves (Romania)3
- Birds of the Late Pleistocene and Holocene from the Palaeolithic Djuktai cave site of Yakutia, eastern Siberia2
- A new Middle Pleistocene bird assemblage from Cava di Breccia di Casal Selce (Ponte Galeria, Rome, Italy)1
- Pleistocene birds of Gruta da Furninha (Peniche-Portugal): a paleontological and paleoenvironmental aproach1
- Bird bones form Soldier's Hole Cheddar, Somerset1
- Pleistocene and prehistoric birds of south-west Britain1
Each of the 12 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Turdus pilaris
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Bengt Nyman from Vaxholm, Sweden
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Turdus pilaris was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Fieldfare”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itTurdus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758