72 BULLETIN 196, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



bird lover an English lawn would seem hardly complete without its 

 pair or more of blackbirds foraging for earthworms, for the species is 

 one that spends much of its time, and gets much of its food, in the 

 open. Unfortunately, however, it does not confine its attentions to 

 worms, and fruit growers would perhaps prefer to be without it. 

 Apart from gardens it is found plentifully in open woodland where 

 there are some bushes and undergrowth (it has been described as 

 perhaps the most typical British woodland bird), in thickets and 

 about hedgerows, as well as in more open localities with some cover, 

 such as rough hillsides, bushy commons, and the like. It is no doubt 

 commonest in cultivated, but not too intensively cultivated, districts 

 where there are scattered woods, copses, and bushy places, but it is 

 found also in quite uncultivated country and, being an adaptable 

 species, may be met with at times even on relatively small treeless 

 islands, nesting on the ground in the shelter of rocks or in the meager 

 cover of brambles or some stunted bush. In the Orkney Islands to 

 the north of Scotland, a change of habitat on a more considerable 

 scale has recently been shown to have taken place. Here it is not 

 only found about woods and haunts of the more usual type, where 

 these exist, but is "also characteristic of open fields and low-lying 

 moorland away from all trees, bushes, gardens and rocks" (Lack, 1942). 

 This has made it possible to colonize considerable areas in these north- 

 ern isles which would otherwise have been closed to it. At the other 

 extreme it has also adapted itself successfully to life in the more so- 

 phisticated surroundings of the parks and residential districts of the 

 larger towns, both of Britain and of the continent of Europe. Here, 

 it must be admitted, its garden haunts, except for being interspersed 

 among houses, are not really so very different from its normal ones, 

 but by no means all garden birds of the country can accommodate 

 themselves to town life. 



Being, as already remarked, a well-known and common European 

 bird, the blackbird has become the subject of a not inconsiderable 

 literature, yet there is still room for a more intensive study of its life 

 history and behavior, by no means all points of which are fully under- 

 stood. Reference may be made here to a valuable recent study (Lack, 

 1943) of the age attained by wild blackbirds, based on an analysis of 

 the British banding returns. The author points out that strictly all 

 that the returns show is the average age of the very small percentage 

 of banded birds found dead by human beings. "But there is no 

 particular reason to think that those adult birds found dead by human 

 beings are on the average either older or younger than the adults in 

 the population as a whole." Leaving out of account banded birds 

 found dead in the first two months after leaving the nest, which are 

 considered for good reasons not to provide a fair sample of the popu- 



