Once upon a time my girlfriend and I would argue over very different birds: Sharleen Spitteri or Annie Lennox; Davina or Lucy Lui – now we sit extolling the virtues of our newfound favourites ‘Bobbin’ Robin or just plain Blackbird. I have to say that while I have a certain fondness for Bobbin, I do tend to find myself more often than not in Blackbird’s camp.
There’s something very engaging about a bird that whilst blessed with wings that work perfectly well chooses instead to run like the clappers – head down for momentum – around the garden looking for scraps. I’m tempted to draw out a start / finish line just to see if we can work out his speed for the journey of hedge to feeder to bench to feeder and back to hedge again. Blackbird is a ground-feeder as well as a sprinter.
Blackbird is also a singer. Every night in the spring he sits atop a solitary fir tree singing his wee heart out – god 
knows what for – I think he fancies himself a bit of a Robbie, but you can virtually set your clock by him. This may well be pre-twitcher imaginings but he actually looks – and sounds – as happy as Larry or as happy as my girlfriend watching aforementioned Sharleen singing her wee heart out at the NEC recently. (As a complete aside - does anyone know who Larry is???)
Blackbird is also a defender of his own territory, happy to chase off pretenders to his realm during breeding season, ably abetted by his often fiercer spouse.
We decided to delve a little deeper into the world of Blackbird and this is what we’ve found:
- Blackbird is a member of the thrush family
- Blackbird is also not a fussy eater – he likes insects and worms just as much as he likes berries and fallen apples. (Our very own Blackbird also has a penchant for raisins and cheese, but not necessarily together.)
- Lady Blackbird as we no doubt already know is not a blackbird at all but rather a brownbird that assumes the alias ‘Blackbird’, in an attempt to confuse us.
- Blackbird is the national bird of Sweden
- Blackbird is also considered a pest in Australia and New Zealand because of his eating habits.
- Apparently, Blackbird likes to quietly ‘sing to himself’ when he’s in the undergrowth during the winter – this quiet singing is called ‘sub-song’
- Blackbird will continue to sing from his solitary fir tree (or in technical terms his ‘song-post’) throughout the summer, but he usually stops some time in early August and is quiet until February or thereabouts.
- You can get albino Blackbirds! Although the completely white ones aren’t likely to survive since they’re easily spotted by predators. More common partial albinos tend to have white patches.
- Blackbird’s nest is an open nest that generally is made up of twigs and grass that are bound together with mud and fine grass. Blackbird’s nesting attempts however are frequently prone to failure often borne of inexperience.
- The four-and-twenty blackbirds that were baked in a pie is not merely a nursery rhyme fallacy – blackbird was once considered a delicacy.
- Although blackbirds are one of Britain’s commonest birds – clocking up an estimated 4,400,000 pairs – it is thought that there has been a 33% decline in numbers in the last 25 years.
