Exhausted they become easy prey. An abundant winter visitor to Norfolk, the fieldfare's distribution varies, at times surprisingly, from winter to winter. The flocks arriving here soon make their way inland. Some years the first arrivals take place during August. In severe winters fieldfares are forced to retreat from East Anglia and they then head westward across the Irish Sea.
Fieldfares breed in Scandinavia and the former Soviet Union including the Baltic States.
In central Europe the breeding range has extended to Holland, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and France. Only a proportion of the Scandinavian fieldfares migrate. The remainder spend the winter in their home countries, often in very large numbers. Breeding habits are as irregular as their migrations. The first known breeding of fieldfares in Britain was in 1967 when a pair nested in Orkney.