Birds
Common Blackbird
Turdus merula · also called Eurasian blackbird, blackbird
The common blackbird is, for hundreds of millions of people in Europe, simply “the blackbird” — the sleek black bird with the orange bill turning over leaves on the lawn, and the unhurried, golden song pouring off the rooftops at first light. It is also a quiet pioneer, one of the first wild birds to move properly into our towns.
Overview
Turdus merula is a thrush, related to the American robin, found across Europe, North Africa, and much of Asia. The male is jet black with a yellow-orange bill; the female is brown and often misidentified. It eats worms and insects in the warm months and berries in winter, and smashes snails on a favourite “anvil” stone.
The song
The male’s rich, fluty, unhurried dawn and dusk song is one of the most admired in Europe. Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird” was partly inspired by one, and the recording features a real bird.
A city bird
Blackbirds began colonising European towns in the early 1800s and are now often denser in cities than in woods. Urban birds sing earlier, are bolder, and have shifted their breeding and migration.
Status
Least Concern and stable to increasing, thriving in gardens and cities. Introduced populations in Australia and New Zealand are fruit-crop pests.
Common Blackbird: common questions
Is the common blackbird the same as an American blackbird?
No, and the two are not even close relatives. The common blackbird is a thrush, in the genus Turdus, and its nearest relatives are the American robin, the song thrush, and the fieldfare. The birds called blackbirds in North America, the red-winged blackbird, common grackle, and their kin, belong to a completely different New World family, the icterids, which also includes the orioles and meadowlarks. The name "blackbird" was simply applied on both sides of the Atlantic to smallish black birds that were not obviously crows.
Why is the female blackbird brown?
The male's glossy black plumage and bright bill are a signal of quality used to attract females and to intimidate rival males, and a paler, better-camouflaged female is safer while sitting on an exposed nest low in a hedge or shrub. This kind of difference between the sexes is common in thrushes and many other songbirds. The brown female blackbird is one of the birds most often reported to garden wildlife surveys as an unidentified "mystery thrush", when it is simply a female or young blackbird.
How have blackbirds done so well in cities?
Cities offer blackbirds a lot — lawns and flowerbeds full of worms, a long supply of berries from ornamental shrubs, nest sites in dense garden hedges and climbers, milder winter temperatures, and fewer of the birds of prey and predators that limit them in woodland. Urban blackbirds have adjusted in measurable ways, breeding earlier in the year, singing before dawn to be heard over traffic, being less fearful of people, and in some cities becoming largely resident rather than migrating. They were among the earliest birds to make the shift from forest to town, and they remain one of the most successful.
What does it mean when a blackbird sings loudly in the evening?
The dawn and dusk song of a male blackbird is territorial and mate-attracting, a statement that this patch of gardens is occupied by a fit bird. The evening song is a normal part of the daily rhythm through the breeding season, roughly March to July in Britain, and a blackbird singing from a chimney or television aerial at last light is simply a male on his song post. It is different from the sharp, repeated "chink" alarm calls, which mean a predator is about, and from the low, quiet subsong that young birds practise.