Blackbird magic

As days lengthen and winter recedes, the blackbird's gorgeous liquid voice joins the dawn chorus. But how much do we really know of this familiar garden songster? Nicola Chester reveals the hidden life of the blackbird

With a song like the light through slow-poured honey, the coal-black male blackbird, with its yellow-gold bill and matching ring around a big, dark eye, is familiar almost everywhere. Along with the subtly dappled, earth-brown female, blackbirds live alongside us, sharing spaces we have created or appropriated; urban, suburban or rural. Appearing almost tame, yet quick to scold with indignant, loud alarm, they accept us as just another animal: reminding (sometimes reprimanding) us, that's what we are.

Our most neighbourly and recognisable member of the thrush family is never far away. Gardens can provide excellent habitats with food, shelter and nesting places in the form of shrubs, hedges and climbers. Close territories are defended by gatepost posturing, with wing and tail flicks. Males (and, to a lesser extent, females) patrol borders, lowering their head into a run like a rugby player with the ball, often using lines we have created as boundaries along a path edge, kerb or roof ridgeline. If this doesn't see a rival off, a fight on the ground ensues.

Blackbirds are ostensibly a woodland bird, and can be heard loudly and furiously flinging leaves about to find insects, eggs and grubs beneath hedges and shrubs, like a teenager who has lost something on the bedroom 'floordrobe'. Large light-gathering eyes, circled by a ring of Romani gold, give them good visibility in low light. In the countryside, this makes them early risers and late sleepers. In warmer, suburban settings, they lie in longer, though some stay up very late under artificial light, street lamp singing into the night.