242 BRITISH BIRDS. 
not unfrequently being found in July and early in August. The young 
birds are fed on worms, snails, grubs, and insects; and the parent bird 
tends them but a short time after they quit the nest. When visiting the 
nest with food, both male and female birds are extremely cautious ; and 
should they obtain a glimpse of any intruder, they will sometimes fly 
restlessly about for hours with the food im their beaks rather than betray 
the site of the nest. Both the male and female bird assist in hatching 
the eggs and rearing the young; but the female is by far the most 
frequently found upon the nest; and she conveys the greater part of the 
food to the young as well. In the rearing-season the male Blackbird 
sometimes warbles as he flies through the air to and from the nest. 
As a cage-bird the Blackbird is held in high esteem. Poor fellow! he 
bears captivity well; and his tuneful melody is often heard in the densest 
thoroughfares of the busy metropolis as the little jet-black chorister 
warbles from his prison-home, in seemingly just as joyous a strain as his 
wild congeners, gladdening the hearts of all who hear it, and doubtless 
bringing to the mind of many a tired wayfarer rural scenes far away, and 
brighter and happier times now long past and gone. 
Our Blackbird’s nearest relation is the South-Chinese Ouzel, Merula 
mandarina, which has the upper parts very dark brown, never quite black. 
There are several other species of Merula in which the male is quite black 
—one in Central America, three or four in South America, and one on 
the Samoa Islands in the Pacific Ocean ; but these may be distinguished 
at a glance from their Palearctic relation by their yellow legs. 
As its name implies, the Blackbird is entirely black, with an orange 
bill, a ring of orange round the eye, black legs, and hazel irides. Shake- 
speare dispenses with long pages of description, and gives his diagnosis 
in a single sentence :— 
“The Ouzel-cock, so black of hue, 
With orange-tawny bill.” 
Midsummer Night's Dream, Act iii. se. 1. 
The female bird differs greatly from the male, is brown with a dark 
brown bill, and is more or less rufous on the throat and breast, which are 
streaked with dusky black. The young birds in nestling plumage have 
most of the feathers with pale shaft-streaks, dark tips to those of the upper 
parts, and the under plumage with dark bars. After the first moult 
the young birds resemble their parents ; but the males have the bill black, 
and the females are suffused on the throat and breast with vinous red. 
It is worthy of remark that both immature birds and old males and females 
have a few fine hairs on the hind neck, growing quite independent of the 
eileen 6 nets adie ee 
titi 
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feathers; so, too, have its near ally M. mandarina and many other * 
Ouzels,. 
