Blackletter

“ The Blackbird could not at all understand it, but as he was well sheltered, and soon got warm in the ivy, he fell asleep and forgot all about it.
The Blackbird on a small white hillock.
The next morning, however, when he woke up and peeped forth from his green canopy, he was much astonished by the sight which met his eyes. Everything was white! The green fields were gone, the lawn where he found his worms, the flower-beds where he caught his insects,––all had disappeared, and a broad, white, sparkling covering lay over everything. ”

“ Afterwards I shot three more at one shot, but only one female amid hundreds of these Yellow-headed Blackbirds. They are quite abundant here, feeding on the surplus grain that drops from the horses' troughs; they walked under, and around the horses, with as much confidence as if anywhere else. When they rose, they generally flew to the very tops of the tallest trees, and there, swelling their throats, partially spreading their wings and tail, they issue their croaking note, which is a compound, not to be mistaken, between that of the Crow Blackbird and that of the Red-winged Starling. ”

“ Worms, grubs, caterpillars, insects, all found their way to the little gaping mouths,––nothing came amiss, until the Blackbird felt that if it went on much longer there would be no insects left in the whole country, and that his young ones would certainly die of indigestion. However, the little birds flourished, and grew apace, and each night as the Blackbird drew in his wings for a few short hours of rest, he wondered when the brood would be old enough to feed themselves, for he looked forward, and with no small longing, to that time of rest. ”

“ With his glossy coat and yellow beak the Blackbird is a handsomer bird than the Thrush; his food is much the same: he builds his nest in similar places; he is a great glutton when gooseberries are ripe, and his rich mellow song is highly inspiriting. But he is suspicious and wary; however hard pressed he may be by hunger, you will rarely see him hunting for food in the open field. He prefers the solitude and privacy of 'the bush'. In a furze-brake, a coppice, a wooded water-course, or a thick hedge-row, he chooses his feeding ground, and allows no sort of partnership. ”

“ At this summer-time, it was a great pleasure to the Blackbird during the afternoon to perch on the limb of an old fir-tree on the lawn, and watch the squirrels at their gambols. They would play long, long games of hide and seek among the dark branches, and then, tired of that, they would chase each other from bough to bough, scattering the pine-cones, which dropped with a soft sound on the grass below. Little wagtails ran nimbly about the lawn uttering their shrill “quit, quit,” and catching as they ran the gnats and other insects. ”

“ It is possible that someone or other will be found to blame me for what I have recorded in the light rather of a triumph—I deemed it one on the spur of the moment; but, though highly disapproving of the indiscriminate and senseless slaughter of rare species that might breed in greater numbers with us if left unmolested, I do not see that the capture of an abnormal-coloured Blackbird deserves reprobation, and especially when it was a marked bird, and the hand of almost every dweller in the district was against it. ”

“ By 4 o'clock every bird was uttering a note of some sort or other.
Going farther in among the nut-bushes, I found Garden Warblers plentiful, and Blackcaps, of course, for a more jealous couple it would be impossible to find. The Blackcap is generally the aggressor; he flies at the Garden Warbler, and then starts to sing, his tail spread out and his wings drooping; and now is the time when they sing most beautifully, more so even than when the females arrive. At times they positively seem to curse one another, the Blackcap always being the more excitable of the two. ”

“ Savages only are exempt from the sparrow: only barren land from the blackbird. As soon as a garden is laid out, a hedge set, an orchard planted, the blackbird comes. Except within easy flight of land that man has tended, it is not found. Its nest, again, has a curious point in its favour, for it is so well built—being a cup of mud strongly felted with moss and grass both inside and out—and, as a rule, in such a sheltered spot that it lasts through the winter, and mice are often glad, when their tenements underground become uncomfortable, to occupy them. ”

“ The winter of 1878 was certainly an unusually dreary one, and so thought a remarkably fine young Blackbird, as he perched one morning on the bare bough of a spreading lime-tree, whose last brown leaf had fallen to the ground some weeks before. ”

“ The blackbird is the shadow of the thrush: you seldom see or hear one without the other: nor, indeed, is either of them often mentioned alone. Yet the blackbird is probably the more commonly seen. For one thing, it is a very conspicuous bird; for another, it is not so diffident as the thrush. It is the blackbirds that you see flying out of the cherry-trees and strawberry-beds, but if you set nets for the marauders, as I did one year to stock an aviary, you catch quite as many mavises as merles. ”

“ The Blackbird had changed his position––he had done it several times: he had moved from a birch to an elm, and then to a beech-tree. But it was of no avail, the little cold droppings seemed to pursue him wherever he went, and it was not till quite late in the night that he found real shelter, and got a little rest in a thick mantle of ivy which completely covered a wall near the stables.
What were these cold droppings? He could not imagine. He knew well enough they were not rain; rain always made a sharp pelting noise as it struck against the trees. ”

“ At the rising of the moon I have heard the cuckoos calling well after the date when they are supposed to be silent, and near midnight have known the blackcap fill a woodland hollow in Argyll with a music as solitary, as intoxicating, as that of a nightingale in a Surrey dell. The thrush, the blackbird, the blackcap, the willow-warbler and other birds may often be heard singing in the dusk, or on moonlit nights, in a warm May: and doubtless it is for this reason that many people declare they have heard the nightingale even in regions where that bird never penetrates. ”

“ It is here that they build their nests and rear their young ones, but only to fly away again in the autumn. Truly, these swallows are wonderful travellers.”
42
“How nice it must be to spend the winter in a warm, sunny place,” remarked the Blackbird, enviously.
“Well, I don’t know,” retorted the Rook; “think of the long, long journey! Think of the miles and miles of ocean to be crossed, think of the weary wings, think of the poor breathless birds. They often perch to rest a while on the passing ships, and they often get knocked down and killed. ”

“ Again the participating musical stumble of the blackbird comes from the tree-branch on the copse margin—a male voice, a bass, with variations of chattering fluency. Late insects linger at the outskirts, and roam the extent of the park. The insect hum rises from the herbage here and there; a bee, trapped by the spider’s snare, hums, buzzing vengeance on the fisher casting his silken net there. In the bushes, a slight fluttering—a leaf floats unheard to the ground, to increase the mouldy earth. ”

“ Both garden-warbler and blackcap are more often heard{102} than seen, and their song, by those who have never heard the nightingale, is regularly mistaken for that bird’s. Indeed, when two blackcaps are singing against each other, the alternating songs seem continuous, and the strength of the voice and the extreme beauty of their notes arrest the ear at once, while, being so unlike the song of either blackbird or thrush, which are heard as a rule only from tops of trees, the music is at once called the nightingale’s. ”

“ The crops of sweet singing Blackbirds are supposed to hold the souls of those in purgatory until the judgment day; and whenever the Blackbird's notes are particularly shrill, these parched and burning souls are imploring for rain, which never fails of coming in response to the bird cries for their relief. ”

“ They seek a cosy home near the water where they can be quiet until August. They usually choose a swampy place among low shrubs and rushes. Here in the deep nest of coarse grass, moss and mud the mother bird lays her five eggs. They are very pretty—light blue with purple and black markings. Their friends say this is the best time to watch the blackbirds. In the flock they are all so much alike we cannot tell one from another. You would like to hear of some of the wise things Blackbirds do when they are tame.
One friend of the birds turned her home into a great open bird cage. ”

“ Blackbirds are social creatures, and where we find one nest, four or five others may be looked for near by. The red-winged blackbird is a mormon in very fact, and often a solitary male bird may be seen guarding a colony of three or four nests, each with an attending female. A sentiment of altruism seems indeed not unknown, as I have seen a female give a grub to one of a hungry nestful, before passing on to brood her own eggs, yet unhatched.
While looking for the blackbirds’ nests we shall come across numerous round, or oval, masses of dried weeds and grass—mice homes we may think them ”

“ He saw the great dark bird flap slowly across the clearing, and melt against the shadow of the giant beech; he heard its hoarse, croaking note; the crowds of heads bowed low before its passage. The White Horses he did not see; only a sound as of considerable masses of air regularly displaced was audible far overhead. But the veiled light, as though great thunderclouds had risen, he saw distinctly. The sky above the clearing where he stood, panting and dishevelled, was blocked by a mass that owned unusual outline. These clouds now topped the forest, hiding the moon and stars. ”

“ He’s one of the laziest and most unprincipled of creatures. He has only one good point about him, that’s his note, and you must know that well. His ‘twofold shout’ of cuckoo is a welcome sound to every one, for it tells us that Spring is here. As I said, however, that is his only good point,––for, can you believe it? he never builds a nest!”
“Never builds a nest!” exclaimed the Blackbird in astonishment, “then where does he lay his eggs?”
“Why,” said the Rook, “the cuckoos have the impudence, the audacity, to drop them in the nest of 61 some other bird, any nest that takes their fancy. ”

“ With this unfortunate horror he hopped back to the unnice scene of the first worm's decease, and carved that second worm up in like manner. Then he peeked up all the sections of both worms, packing them into his beak somehow, and flew off. And the robin who was watching him didn't even trouble to fly down to the spot and see if he had left a joint behind. He knew his blackbird, it seemed.
Blackie flew away to his nest, but not to a nest in a hedge. To dwell in a hedge was a rule of his clan, but the devil a rule did he obey. Nests in hedges for other blackbirds, perhaps. ”

“ Male, black and white; female, brown and gray.
This species is often known as the White-winged Blackbird, not because it bears any resemblance to any of the Blackbirds, nor because any of the habits are the same, but simply because of its plumage. They are very gregarious and usually fly in flocks even in nesting time.
They seem to be very methodical and well trained; if one of a flock takes wing, the entire flock rises simultaneously and in a very compact body they fly until some leader chooses the next stopping place, when they as suddenly alight. ”

“ The opening and shutting of the window had frightened the Blackbird; 18 he had flown to a more distant bush; but as the more courageous Robin only fluttered about for a moment, the Blackbird soon came back, and in less than a minute the Robin was upon the gravel path hard at work picking up the dainty white crumbs. The Blackbird still hesitated on the laurel branch, loth to remain, yet fearful to advance, but at last, impelled by a sudden pang of hunger, he ventured to join his red-breasted friend. ”

“ American blackbirds do not sing well; the so-called crow-blackbird, so common in flocks in autumn, makes a noise like tonsillitis, or as if he had a boy’s voice in process of changing, or as if he were a hinge that needed oiling. Our redwing blackbird, with his scarlet epaulets, has a good-natured and perky wheeze, which can hardly be called singing. But the English and Continental blackbird pours out of his throat the most heavenly melody. One Winter day in Munich, in the midst of a snowstorm, I saw a blackbird perched on a tree directly in front of the University building. ”

“ Now, there were so many that nearly every one of the tall evergreens bore a Blackbird’s nest. These were built near the top and close to the trunk of the tree. They were carefully woven of different things and lined with mud. Unless you knew the ways of Blackbirds, you would never find out that there was a nest on the place. No careful Blackbird, you know, will fly straight to his home if any one is watching him. He will walk around on the lawn in the most careless manner possible, until he has the home tree between him and you. ”