The Blackbird

Turdus merula

The females are not black but brown with varying amounts of mottled spotting on the chest.

The Blackbird typically lives for around 3 years.

There are nearly 6 million nesting pairs, making the Blackbird one of Britain’s most common birds.

Urban Blackbirds live in densities 10 times higher and raise more young per nest than their rural cousins.

Blackbirds were originally woodland birds that learnt to embrace our gardens since Victorian times.

It has one of the most beautiful songs in the whole of the United Kingdom.

Blackbirds were once on the menu during the Middle Ages and were celebrated in the nursery rhyme:

Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye;
Four and twenty Blackbirds baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened the birds began to sing;
Was not that a dainty dish to put before a king.