| A much loved bird with the glossy black plumage and the orange-yellow
bill and eye ring of the mature male making it easily recognisable. Originally
birds of woodland and heaths Blackbirds have easily adapted to farmland
and gardens becoming one of the commonest UK birds.The female is brown with
a yellow-brown bill with usually speckled under-parts and a pale throat.
Young birds are reddish-brown with paler spotting. The song is rich, mellow
and varied but the male stops singing after the breeding season is over
apart from quiet "singing to themselves" whilst under cover. Strange
to our modern tastes but the Blackbird, along with other songbirds, were
often caught for food and considered a delicacy as in the old rhyme:
Sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of rye
Four-and-twenty Blackbirds baked in a pie
When the pie was opened the birds begin to sing
Oh wasn't that a dainty dish to set before the King |
