ON THE WILD SIDE
SING PRAISES OF OUR HERO
I USE “about the same size as a blackbird” to compare some of the rarer species, since it is a fairly familiar sight to most Brits.
However, I don’t think I have given any time to talk about this common garden visitor.
So today let’s celebrate a hedgerow hero.
For a bird that is now so common, the blackbird has a surprisingly small number of regional names – “ouzel” being the most common.
Ouzel now, of course, only refers to their much rarer cousin, the ring ouzel, who just looks like a blackbird with a crescent moon on his chest.
One of the reasons for their lack of familiarity may be that throughout most of history, they were not the familiar sight in our gardens that we are now used to.
Blackbirds living in human settlements is so new that many early naturalists’ papers and tomes barely mention them, or fail to mention them at all – citing them as shy and elusive birds of the woodland.
It’s a little strange that of all the black-coloured birds in the UK, the name was given to the one with a bright yellow beak and eye-ring, and to a species whose female isn’t black at all!
The dappled brown female was often called a French blackbird historically, with the male simply a blackbird.
People living near woods would occasionally partake of the blackbird, and a 16th-century source cites it as the second tastiest small bird after the lark.
They bizarrely also believed that blackbird meat was a cure for dysentery! It isn’t. Please don’t eat blackbirds. Blackbirds are celebrated most in song, with some of the earliest encounters being in nursery rhymes or Christmas songs.
Sing A Song Of Sixpence features blackbirds baked into a pie crust to delight a king, while the four “colly” birds in the 12 Days Of Christmas song are the very same blackbird. Ireland, however, has a much brighter relationship. Loud blackbird singing is said to bring the rain, and the legend of St Kevin features the bird.
The story goes that one day our strangely named saint was praying when a blackbird decided to fly down and lay her eggs in his hands. The patient saint stayed completely still until the chicks were safely hatched, had all grown up and flown away. Such dedication – but hell, I bet he really needed a wee!