THE BLACKBIRD. 
U % f- Tv 
[Tardus menila , L.) 
;j||VERY garden-lover knows but too well, for its pilfering 
and its song, 
“ The Ousel-cock, so black of hue, 
With orange-tawny bill; ” 
and our forefathers, if we may judge by their ballads, associated 
it pleasantly with spring and wooded banks— 
“’Tis merry, ’tis merry in good green wood 
When mavis and Merle are singing.” 
And yet it is a shy bird, seldom seen in flocks, and sufficiently 
proclaiming its fears by its loud screaming notes when disturbed 
from the hedgerows and thickets which it is fond of haunting. It 
is a very early riser, and this same frightened scream is uttered 
as it leaves the evergreens in the garden during winter, and 
so awakes the other birds roosting around it. When it appears upon the lawn 
in search of earthworms, which form a favourite dainty, it is always ready to dart 
under a bush at a moment’s notice, and never cares even in the open fields to 
venture far from its sheltering hedge or thicket. The luckless worm is pounced 
upon, pecked, and thrown to the ground, sometimes swallowed in pieces, but 
oftener whole. The services a pair of Blackbirds thus render to a garden are 
perhaps not sufficiently weighed against their devastations in the orchard. In 
winter it may be seen at times in the farmyard searching for scattered grain. 
The larvm of insects and snails, however, varied with fruit, especially gooseberries, 
of which it is exceedingly fond, form the staple of its food during the rest of the 
