Urban birds

Think you already know everything about the Blackbird? Our man David Lindo has something new for you.

This month, David takes a look at one of our best loved and most familiar birds of town and country

The Blackbird is well known in gardens up and down the land. Originally a woodland denizen, its familiar song and chattering alarm calls form part of the soundscape of many people’s lives. According to the British Trust of Ornithology, at 5.05 million pairs, it comes in at joint fifth most numerous British bird alongside the Chaffinch. And, for us in Britain, Ireland as well as most of Western Europe, it is a bird that needs little introduction.

Well, at least the male doesn’t. His glossy black plumage and yellow bill makes him unmistakable in most urban settings, although confusion arises when similarly hued Starlings flash across the vistas of less experienced watchers. There is also the possibility of mixing the Blackbird up with its far scarcer and wilder cousin – the Ring Ouzel. But I will examine that conundrum a little later.

The Blackbird came third in the 2015 Vote for Britain’s National Bird. After trailing the Robin at the start of the voting process, just before the final whistle, it became a victim of the Harry Potter Effect. It became apparent that it had been beaten by the Barn Owl after the kids’ votes were factored in.

The Blackbird did manage to be voted Sweden’s National Bird the year after, and I had the privilege of announcing it there.

But, as familiar as the Blackbird is in the UK, the question that I love asking is how many of us remember to talk about the male’s gorgeous yellow eye-ring when describing his appearance? For me, it is up there with trying to draw where a Robin’s red breast starts and ends from memory. It is tricky. It is like we have become blind to some of the obvious features displayed by our most familiar species. While on the subject of ID, the dowdy brown females and rusty-flushed juveniles are often a stumbling block for many a beginner birder. Some show spotting on the chest that elicits calls of Song Thrush from confused birders. Believe it or not, there are even people that are blissfully unaware that females are brown.

Of course, Blackbirds are perhaps best known for their smooth, mellifluous song. It is a song that has launched a thousand ships, being oft quoted in literature and culture; lauded by everyone from William Shakespeare to Paul McCartney. Interestingly, McCartney claimed to have been inspired by hearing a Blackbird in India, and the resulting song was ultimately a metaphor for the civil rights struggles and should really have been titled Black Girl. If this is true, then the ‘blackbird’ that he heard in India may have been a totally different species.

The Common Blackbird, to give this handsome thrush its full international name, can be mainly discovered throughout temperate Eurasia, the Canary Islands, North Africa into Asia and China. It was unfortunately introduced to Australia and New Zealand, to the detriment of some of the endemic species, as well as the local orchards.

It may surprise you to know that there are several subspecies of Blackbird and not all are familiar garden-loving inhabitants. The Asian birds in particular are retiring, living mostly in pairs or alone, skulking in the undergrowth. Mr McCartney may have struggled to come across one singing in the dead of night. Back in Europe, it has been noted that the migratory Scandinavian birds are a tad longerwinged and sootier black. In Spain, the females are slaty-brown, while further east, in countries like Israel and Turkey, the females are positively pallid, with the

males a paler shade of dark. When I visited the Azores, the race of Blackbird inhabiting the islands there was shorter winged, resulting in a more fluttering flight, plus they had weird calls. Indeed, some of the races in China, the Indian Subcontinent and Sri Lanka are so distinct that they’ve been mooted as potential ‘splits’.

Family resemblance

Of the world’s 86 or so species of true thrushes (Turdidae), which include our familiar larger thrushes and the American Robin, there seems to be groups of species that seem to share the same common ancestors. Simply speaking, you have the ones with spotted chests, others that seem like washed-out versions of the American Robin and then a load of… Blackbirds!

I was surprised when I visited Peru, to encounter Glossy Thrush and Great Thrush, both of which superficially resemble our Blackbird. Elsewhere in the world exist other Blackbird-type thrushes with elements of white in their plumage. Examples include the White-collared Blackbird and Grey-winged Blackbird, both hailing from

Asia and, of course, the Ring Ouzel.

This brings us neatly back to distinguishing a genuine urban migrant Ring Ouzel from a piebald (partially leucistic) Blackbird. Usually, the distribution of white on the Blackbird is around the head and neck, although it could occur anywhere. Occasionally, you will get birds with a white crescent on their chests resembling a Rouzel. However, the latter species never looks that blackand-white and will be unlikely to be boldly hopping around on your lawn looking like it owned the place.

This autumn on your local urban patch, if you glimpse a dark thrush fly past you into a distant tree, my tip would be this: if it raises its tail when it lands then it is a Blackbird. If it doesn’t, well you could have discovered a Ring Ouzel!