Zorzal Real La Rioja

The fieldfare inhabits semi-open cultural landscapes with scattered trees, woodland edges, field copses, avenues, traditional orchards and larger parks and gardens. It prefers fresh to moist ground with short grass vegetation that serves as feeding habitat. The species is highly gregarious: outside the breeding season it travels in large flocks, often mixed with redwings, and feeds extensively on berries such as rowan, hawthorn and juniper during winter.

During the breeding season the fieldfare nests sociably in small colonies, typically of five to ten pairs, in tree rows or field copses. Colonial breeders defend their nests very vigorously against predators such as carrion crows and birds of prey, using coordinated mobbing flights and even targeted defecation on intruders.

Under the historical name Krammetsvogel, fieldfares were trapped in very large numbers until the early twentieth century, particularly on autumn migration using specially prepared heath sites and horsehair snares known as Dohnenstieg. Snare trapping was outlawed in 1908 by the Reichsvogelschutzgesetz. Today the fieldfare is listed as a specially protected species under the Federal Nature Conservation Act and has no open hunting season; its former role as game is only of cultural and linguistic significance.