274: THE BLACKBIRD. 



It whistled and precented there 



Sae natural and cheerie, O ; 

 While Mess John glumly said his prayer, 



And man o' creeds was wearie, O. 



Preferring a musical concert — even in the church. When it 

 alights it has a graceful habit of bending its body, jerking up 

 its tail, then hops along, abruptly stops and flaps its wings 

 before it begins to sing. But unless high up or screened by 

 leaves it always glides out of sight ; for while such birds as the 

 pert sparrow and the robin only hop, the blackbird, like the rest 

 of the thrushes, both hops and runs with celerity. As his name 

 implies, the adult male is a black bird, with a bright orange 

 bill. The margins of the eyelids, tongue, and mouth also 

 yellow, gives this elegantly-formed thrush a lovely finished 

 gilded look, the iris hazel. The female — unlike the ladies of 

 humanity — is very plainly attired in sombre brown,* without 

 the yellow finish — the young males being the same until they 

 moult. The male is lOf inches to end of tail, and 16 inches in 

 extent of wings — the female less. Like all the thrushes its 

 range of food is wide ; insects, worms, snails, berries, fruit, seeds. 

 and husks — including wheat and oats — mollusca and Crustacea. 

 But starvation, like necessity, has no law, if anything can be 

 found to keep the fire of life burning. When hard pressed I 

 have seen rooks feeding on the small black seeds of the 

 laburnum, and watched blackbirds take a quarter of an hour to 

 kill worms five inches long, by taking them in their bill and 

 striking them on the soil, dividing them in two before 

 swallowing them at two gulps. When sitting on the bank of 

 the Eden, near Cupar, on the 20th February 1891, I saw one 

 alight on the sandy soil ; it stood and listened, then dug rapidly 

 with its bill and unearthed a large worm, killed and swallowed 

 it as described. They roost at dusk in winter amongst ivy, 

 evergreens, or any sheltered place, thankful if for "daily 

 bread" they have got a few haws or a couple of worms. 



"For he that has enough can soundly sleep 

 The owrecome only fashes folk to keep." 



The blackbirds live about twelve years. 



* But I have seen them with pink breasts. 



