Day 57 - On The Fourth Day of Nature

On the Fourth Day of Nature my true love gave to me, 4 Calling birds, 3 Brown Chickens, 2 Collared Doves and a Partridge on a board walk.

Four Calling Birds :-)

Hey everyone. It's Day 57 and my 4th day of nature. So my version goes like this today:

On the Fourth Day of Nature my true love gave to me, 4 Calling birds, 3 Brown Chickens, 2 Collared Doves and a Partridge on a board walk.

According to this article from BBC Earth, the calling bird in the rhyme is the much loved garden blackbird. It's not that surprising when you think about its lovely song. There's a great recording of blackbird song here on the British Library website. 

I did a blog post back on day 35 on Beautiful Blackbirds and I covered a lot of facts there. A new thing that I learnt from the BBC Earth article is that blackbird numbers have been in decline but then started to get better since 1986. However they aren't doing as well now it seems as the number of chicks that fledge has fallen to quite low levels but they still have a Green Status from the RSPB.

Blackbird (Turdus merula)

Here's a few more facts i didn't include before:

• Length 24cm

• Wingspan 36cm

• Weight 100g

• Newly hatched young take a week to learn to fly but fledge after 13 or 14 days, but can leave and survive sooner if they need to.

• They learn what to eat by trial and error!

So, I hope that's plenty of information for you along with my last post but if you want to find out more try these links:

RSPB Community 21 Facts - Blackbirds

RSPB - Blackbirds

BTO Birdfacts - Blackbirds

Hope you enjoyed,

Z.