A blackbird is not just for Christmas...

FOUR Collie Birds... Yes, that’s right, not ‘four calling birds’ which most versions of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ have, but four collie (or colly) birds.

Collie merely means black, as in colliery, and it could be said therefore that, in the Black Country at least, the blackbird should challenge the robins’ Christmas monopoly.

There are about five million breeding pairs of blackbirds in this country, and by Christmas they will have been joined by up to five million from Scandinavia and northern Europe.

They arrive with their fieldfare and redwing cousins, to escape the worst of the winter weather, and to feast on hawthorn. You may have a resident blackbird or two, but in reality you could be seeing different individuals passing through your garden all the time.

As a type of thrush, blackbirds are related to song and mistle thrushes, ring ouzels, black redstarts and nightingales.

They have also settled down in places we have introduced them, including the Falkland Islands, Australia and New Zealand, South Africa and the Americas.

They also move themselves around, although they are very flexible about migration.

Some populations stay put, others abandon their summer homes for warmer places, and some split themselves between these two options. More urban birds sit out the winter than rural birds, because towns and cities are warmer.

Blackbirds were familiar enough in medieval times to star as living ingredients beneath pie crusts, as embodied in the nursery rhyme Sing a Song of Sixpence. This was one of many novelties and entertainments which punctuated the aristocracy’s grand banquets.

Blackbirds are not just for Christmas though, they are a bird for all seasons. We sing about them now, and they provide life and movement in our wintery gardens.

In the spring they are among the sweetest singers, as befits their membership of the thrush clan. In the summer they will often nest close to our houses and outbuildings, and all year they will act as free garden pest controllers.

Peter Shirley is a Midlandbased nature conservationist