fieldfare

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“
The restless call of the birds added a peculiar charm to the scene in the darkening twilight Of our winter visitants that come to take the place of the summer migrants the fieldfare is the commonest and most familiar.

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Definitions (4)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. noun An Old World thrush (Turdus pilaris) having gray and reddish-brown plumage.

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Examples (36)

  • Now they were making their homes in Ireland, as were their former neighbours on Russia's arid summer plains, redwing and fieldfare by the thousand, foraging across the Irish pastures. —  Belfasttelegraph.co.uk - Frontpage RSS Feed
  • This morning I found three redwing heads and one of a fieldfare below the tower, as well as a common snipe's beak. —  Museum Blogs
  • Hedgehogs make a deep and warm hybernaculum with leaves and moss, in which they conceal themselves for the winter: but I never could find that they stored in any winter provision, as some quadrupeds certainly do I have discovered an anecdote with respect to the fieldfare (_turdus pilaris_) which I think is particular enough; this bird, though it sits on trees in the daytime, and procures the greatest part of its food from white-thorn hedges, yea, moreover, builds on very high trees, as may be seen by the fauna suecica_; yet always appears with us to roost on the ground. —  The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1
  • Now as to the fieldfare, Linnaeus, in his "Fauna Suecica," says of it, that "_maximis in arboribus nidificat_;" and of the redwing he says, in the same place, that "_nidificat in mediis arbusculis_, sive sepibus_; ova sex coeruleo-viridia maculis nigris variis_." —  The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1
  • Royston, or grey crows, are winter birds that come much about the same time with the woodcock; they, like the fieldfare and redwing, have no apparent reason for migration; for as they fare in the winter like their congeners, so might they in all appearance in the summer. —  The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1
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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English feldfare, from Old English feldeware, error for *feldefare : perhaps feld, field; see field + *-fare, goer (from faran, to go; see per-2 in Indo-European roots).

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. English dial. also fieldfare, felfare, felfer, etc.; from Middle English fieldfare, feldefare, from Anglo-Saxon * feldefare (spelled feldeware in the single gloss in which it occurs: “Scorellus, clodhamer and feldeware, vel bugium”; cf. “scorellus, amore,” i. e., yellow-hammer, q. v.; bugium, an obscure word, the name of a bird (fieldfare), mentioned along with the ruddock, goldfinch, lark, dove, etc.), from feld, field, + faran, fare, go. Not the same word, or bird, as often alleged, with Anglo-Saxon feolufor, feolufer, fealefor, fealuor, fealfor, felofer, earliest gloss feoluferth, a kind of water-fowl, glossed variously by L. onocrotalus (pelican), porphyrio (sultana-hen), and torax (for thorax, literally ‘breast,’ in allusion to the pelican?). The composition of Anglo-Saxon feolufor, etc., is not clear.
 

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/ˈfildfɛr/
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