Now that winter has finally arrived, be ready to see extra winter visitors to your bird feeders.

Common birds such as the blackbird arrive in suburban gardens in greater numbers during the winter.

I always thought that these were countryside birds coming into town because of easier food and I was right, but that is only part of the story.

Most people are aware of swallows and swifts spending the summer feeding and breeding in England and then flying south as autumn approaches.

Some people know that England is the winter destination for other birds from northern countries fleeing the harsh Arctic and sub-Arctic winters, the turnstones that live on our beach during the winter being the obvious examples around here.

I was surprised to learn this week that the UK blackbird population sees a dramatic increase in winter as more than a million birds reach our shores from Scandinavia and the Baltic regions.

Most spread no further than Scotland and Northern Ireland, but many spend the winter in the south of England.

So, the extra blackbirds visiting your bird feeders might have flown 1,200 miles from Helsinki in Finland.

We might complain about our winter but, the further north and east you go, the harder it is for blackbirds to find food.

According to the British Birds Journal, 16% of Danish blackbirds migrate to milder climes.

As many as 61% of Norwegian and 75% of Swedish birds migrate and nearly 90% of Finnish blackbirds have to leave in search of food, about one-quarter of them spend the winter in central and southern England according to records of ringed birds.

It is a tough journey and the birds have to be quite resilient.

Researchers have found that these migratory birds have slightly longer wings on average than our resident birds, but the clearest difference is that the males often have darker beaks than the bright orange of the local population, some even have beaks that are almost black.

Blackbirds are members of the thrush family and two other family members, redwings and fieldfares, also migrate to Britain in the winter, but they are not joining resident populations.

When spring arrives they all return to their breeding sites.

Redwings return to Iceland, the Faroes and Scandinavia, the fieldfares are further east and return to Scandinavia and Russia.

Let’s hope that our efforts to supply them with food from our bird tables will help maintain the population.

There is plenty of good advice available on feeding wild birds; links can be found on the SVBG website.