The common blackbird is a species of true thrush. It breeds in Europe, Asiatic Russia, and North Africa, and has been introduced to Australia and New Zealand. The adult male is all black except for a yellow eye-ring and bill. It is omnivorous, eating a wide range of insects, earthworms, berries, and fruits.
About Common blackbird in brief
The common blackbird is a species of true thrush. It breeds in Europe, Asiatic Russia, and North Africa, and has been introduced to Australia and New Zealand. It has a number of subspecies across its large range; a few of the Asian subspecies are sometimes considered to be full species. The adult male is all black except for a yellow eye-ring and bill and has a rich, melodious song. This species breeds in woods and gardens, building a neat, mud-lined, cup-shaped nest. It is omnivorous, eating a wide range of insects, earthworms, berries, and fruits. Both sexes are territorial on the breeding grounds, with distinctive threat displays, but are more gregarious during migration and in wintering areas. It may not immediately be clear why the name \”blackbird\”, first recorded in 1486, was applied to this species, but not to one of the various other common black English birds, such as the carrion crow, raven, rook, or jackdaw. In Old English, and in modern English up to about the 18th century, \”bird\” was used only for smaller or young birds, and larger ones such as crows were called \”fowl\”. At that time, the blackbird was therefore the only widespread and conspicuous \”black bird\” in the British Isles. The icterid family of the New World is sometimes called the blackbirds family because of some species’ superficial resemblance to the common blackbirds and other Old World thrushes, but they are not evolutionarily close.
The term is often limited to smaller species with mostly black plumage with mostly or entirely black plumages, including the grack, grack and red-winged blackbird. Around 20 species of thrushes are in the genus Turdus, characterised by rounded heads, longish, pointed wings, and usually melodiously songs. In Europe, it would be expected for a widespread passerine bird species to be a blackbird, but it differs in the appearance and voice of the eyering and eyering of the red-wingsed black bird. The Central Asia subspecies, the relatively large intermedius, also differs in appearance, voice and eye ring, and differs in structure and appearance of the white-throated dipper. The blackbird may represent a distinct species, and it has been suggested that it should be considered a subspecies of maximus maximus, Europe’s maximus. It also differs from the Central Asian sub species in the relatively intermedius in the structure and eye-rings of the eyes, and also in the voice and structure of the ear-ring. The common black bird was described by Carl Linnaeus in his landmark 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae as Turdus merula. The binomial name derives from two Latin words, turdus and merula, \” blackbird\”, the latter giving rise to its French name, merle, and its Scotsname, merl.
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This page is based on the article Common blackbird published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 07, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
