It is noteworthy of this charming bird that it is an emblem of cultivation, as the sparrow is of civilisation. 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. At other times, too, they serve them admirably for store-rooms and larders. One blackbird’s nest that I knew of, built into some very dense ivy in an angle of a wall, was a squirrel’s garden-house; not its regular home, for that was up in the pine-tree overhead, but a pleasure retreat for empty hours. But a vagabond rat turned it out, and made a “doss-house” of it.
The blackbird’s song everybody knows, but I have found that only the closer observers of Nature have noticed how it differs from that of other birds. Michael Drayton was, I think, the first:
“The woosell that hath a golden bill
As Nature him had mark’t of purpose, t’ let us see
That from all other birds his tune should different be;
For with their vocal sounds they sing to pleasant May,
Upon his dulcet pipe the merle doth only play.”
The old English somewhat obscures the meaning, which is, that while all other birds “sing” with their throats, the blackbird alone “plays” upon a pipe. This “dulcet pipe” occurs in other poets, and two or three, Wordsworth, for instance, speak of “blackbird pipers.” It is almost the only bird said to “whistle” and to “flute.” The distinction is just, for it is, I think, the only European songster whose melody so curiously suggests artificial assistance. No voice is so completely a bird’s voice as the nightingale’s, but the blackbird, when at its best, is the master playing on some exquisite instrument. So the ear that has once distinguished the difference can never mistake the blackbird for the thrush. It is, too, perhaps the only bird that sings its best in captivity. There used to be one in an inn in Epping Forest that outsang all the wild birds within hearing.
Why do caged birds sing, if singing is the expression of happiness and joy? That human beings should, by the exercise of reason, or the growth of new interests, by the lapse of time, or the consolations of religion, recover, after a severe blow, their original serenity and even light-heartedness, is sufficiently intelligible. But what would the world say of any bridegroom, torn away from the arms of his bride, and shut up in a kennel; or of a young father kidnapped in the bosom of his young family, and ignominiously imprisoned in a fowl-run, who should straightway behave himself with the utmost gaiety, and exhibit to passers-by every symptom of happiness? Yet this is what the blackbird, caught in full song during the pairing season, does. He goes on singing just as if nothing had happened. It may be, of course, that the brief days of moping through which the poor bird passes, correspond to long years of human sorrowing, and that then hope revives, and the blackbird, remembering how song used to be “once upon a time” associated with all the joys of home and home-life, thinks that if he only sings long enough and well enough, they may all come back again. But surely there cannot be any happiness in that happy-sounding song?
Love-notes of birds are generally unmusical and often grotesque. When they are pretty they are monosyllabic. So the emotions that prompt lengthened melody are, as a rule, the sterner and unamiable. Anger, defiance, pride and possessiveness supply the motives of their songs.
When a lion is amiable, he is quiet; his loudest utterance is a yawn; when courting, he grunts and hiccoughs; when aggressive or inclined to assert himself, “just to let Africa know” as it were, he opens upon the world with the artillery of his voice. Is that the lion’s way of “singing”? and is the blackbird’s song its way of “roaring”?
To take a more familiar case, it is only when the animal is in the presence of his own sex, and his intentions are the reverse of friendly, that the human understanding arrives at the vocal compass of domestic tom-cats. They then sing melancholy part-songs, out of all time and tune: we call them “cats’ concerts.” But if you will listen to them, and not disturb them either by laughter or missiles (as your humour may take you), you will observe that each cat is “singing” its very best. Very often no scrimmage results after the music is over, but each cat, satisfied with its exhibition of its upper register, goes its way. If, while listening, you can also see the cats while they are singing, you can have no more doubt as to their own opinion of their performances than when watching a blackbird. Female cats cannot sing. That fine voice is an ornament of the male sex alone, and whenever one male meets another—none of the other sex being present—they at once (if sudden conflict, giving no time for a “glee,” does not supervene) fall to singing, each pitting his “g” against the other’s. You may any day see two such encounterers, having sung their songs, relapse into placid indifference to each other’s presence, just as blackbirds do, and depart harmlessly each about his own duties.