Who needs TV soap operas when you have wildlife in the garden?
Sitting on my corner bench or standing by the kitchen sink, I get a great deal of pleasure taking in the behaviour of different birds that come and go. Over the last six weeks or so, I have been mostly following the lives of a blackbird family as mother and father help their youngster with the early stages of fledging.
I have watched with fascination as the young bird, all mottled brown and ruffled, made its early appearances out from the ivy hedge where the nest is situated, as mother and father took turns to feed it bits of seed from under the bird feeders. As the youngster developed, I have been amused by its failed attempts to fly back up to the nest, often crashing into the fence as it was unable to gain height quickly. Most recently, I have been struck by how it has developed into a fine young bird, upright and cocky, willing to explore the garden further away from its parents.
As a father of two boys aged 16 and 17, I can identify with these stages of development – the awkward looking teenager that still needs its parents but is desperate for independence, who is bound to make mistakes as they try things for themselves, but is also a beautiful creature in their own right.
Endearing
These days blackbirds are mostly a bird of the garden, living in close vicinity to humans. Perhaps, that is why we find Turdus merula so endearing. They seem to trust us, know that we are near and keep us company. They are also one of the few bird species where it is very easy to tell the male and female apart – the female is dark brown with a lighter underbelly, which often shows the speckled markings that signify it is part of the thrush family. The male is a beautiful bird, slender and black with a bright orange-yellow beak and a yellow ring around its eye.
Its selection of songs and calls are among people’s favourites, so common and familiar are their splendour. Paul McCartney may have sung about the blackbird ‘singing in the dead of night’ but in my experience it is early in the morning and at dusk when their song is most clear. I love hearing the blackbird at sunset and in spring you often see the male perched high up on a chimney or roof ridge, broadcasting the end of the day. Like the ‘Last Post,’ the blackbird lends a melancholic beauty to the setting of the sun.
Incidentally, the wonderful ‘Blackbird’ by the Beatles, which appeared on their 1968 White Album, was not a ditty about a feathered friend but rather a song – written shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King – talking to a black woman about how they hoped things would improve in the American South: ‘Take these broken wings and learn to fly/All your life/You were only waiting for this moment to arise.’
Ouzel
Blackbirds feature frequently in our popular culture. On several occasions, Shakespeare mentioned them, although in Elizabethan times blackbirds were referred to as ouzels. There is one relative of the blackbird, the ringed ouzel, that still retains this moniker. It is a striking creature, like the blackbird but with a white breast bib. The ringed ouzel is found in northern England and Scotland and although I have kept an eye out when visiting relatives in the Peak District, I have never been lucky (or determined) enough to see one.
The nursery rhyme about four and twenty blackbirds baked into a pie, also harks back to Tudor times. If you wanted to make an impression at a royal banquet, you placed captured birds in a dish covered with a pie crust, so that they would fly out as the pastry was cut open. This was the showy entrée before the real food was served. It is said that the blackbird pie was based on a real-life episode, a desperate gift to Henry VIII from a group of monks and friars, who were trying in vain to persuade him not to dissolve the monasteries.
While the young blackbird growing up in my Sudbury garden today will undoubtedly have to avoid numerous threats to reach adulthood, thankfully, being forced into a fake pie is unlikely to be one of them.
Suffolkwilds 