And Shelley’s poem on the skylark expresses the ethereal nature of the soaring voice of this bird:
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and
Soaring ever singest.
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. He was “hove to,” that is, he had his beak turned directly into the wind, and as the snowflakes beat against his little face, he sent straight into the gale the loveliest music. Tennyson has observed how the voice of the blackbird loses its beauty in the hot Summer days.
A golden bill! the silver tongue,
Cold February loved, is dry: