Birds: Rare winter migrants stun UK photographer - leaving him with photos that look 'like a Christmas card'

Stunning photographs showing rare winter visitors gorging themselves on a bumper crop of berries have been likened to scenes from a Christmas card, as the UK sees a potential "irruption" of birds.

Colourful waxwings, snow buntings and other less common guests have been flocking to the UK from Scandinavia in higher numbers than usual this year, in their annual search for food during the cold season. The UK, meanwhile, has had a potentially record-breaking bumper crop of winter food sources like hawthorn berries, in what the Woodland Trust describes as great news for wildlife.

Wildlife photographer Andrew Fusek-Peters managed to capture stunning snaps of the birds in Shropshire and Wales, as they refuelled from their 560-mile journey. One image shows a waxwing juggling a rowan berry mid air in Newtown, Wales, while a snow bunting admires its own reflection in water on Clee Hill, Shropshire.

Mr Fusek-Peters told SWNS he believed the UK was seeing an irruption of rare bird species - where northern-wintering species arrive in unusually high numbers, in years of low food availability in their native lands. “These are all really rare birds," he said. “This year there's definitely an irruption, shed loads are coming over as it’s a very good year for berries from the mountains."

He had received a lot of compliments on his photos of the unusual visitors, he said. "Lots of people have said they would make a great traditional Christmas card, especially the ones of the waxwing with the berries. Those one are quite festive, I must admit."

The Hallmark-ready snap was a moment of good luck. “They’re trying to get the berry to go down their gullet, like a kingfisher with a minnow, they need it in the right place," he said. “They’re just so beautiful. And they were taken in a theatre car park in Wales. There’s buses of people going past and then there’s these exotic-looking birds people don’t realise are there.

Before this year, the last time Mr Fusek-Peters had photographed a waxwing was six years ago. "This is a winter like no other." Capturing snow buntings arriving from Scandinavia to feed on mountain ash berries was just icing on the cake. "When they arrive, they eat grass seed and then travel up to Scotland after a few days. They aren’t really shy of humans, I was two or three feet away and crawling towards them," he said.

He had also managed to catch a usually exclusively summertime visitor enjoying the berry surplus - a ring ouzel. “The ring ouzel comes over for the summer. They are rare visitors too. They’re very uncommon. I [worked] hard waiting for the right weather. Within a week or two they won’t be here.”

The Woodland Trust earlier announced this autumn may have yielded the biggest crop of hawthorn berries in 20 years of records, with reports from its Nature's Calendar volunteers rating 2023 as 4.2 - or "exceptional" - on the fruit scale. This takes into account dozens of records where hawthorn trees are judged on the abundance of their berries.

The Nature’s Calendar team put the exceptional crop down to a mild spring where temperatures hovered above average.