Eurasian Blackbird

1 Species Overview

The Eurasian blackbird (Turdus merula) is the national bird of Sweden. The male is entirely black except for a bright yellow eye-ring and bill; females and fledglings lack the yellow eye-ring and instead wear brown plumage with a darker bill.

It belongs to the thrush family (Turdidae), genus Turdus. The species ranges across Europe, Africa and Asia, frequenting woodland edges, the margins of small towns and villages, orchards, gardens and open country, and it will also forage near rubbish heaps and latrines. It is omnivorous, feeding on insects, earthworms, seeds and berries.

Taxonomy: Chinese name Wu Dong; aliases Bai She, Fan She, also called the Chinese blackbird; binomial Turdus merula; kingdom Animalia; phylum Chordata; class Aves; order Passeriformes; family Turdidae (thrushes); genus Turdus.

Distribution: found across the Eurasian continent and northern Africa, the Indian subcontinent and southwestern China.

2 Physical Characteristics

At first glance the blackbird looks solid and sturdy, larger than the average garden bird. An adult ideally measures about 26 cm in body length, with a wingspan of 34 to 38.5 cm and an ideal weight of 80 to 110 g. Its lifespan reaches around 16 years.

The male is overall black, blackish-brown or dark sooty brown, sometimes tinged rusty or grey. The upperparts including the wings and tail are black; the underparts are blackish-brown, slightly paler, with the chin edged in brown and the throat faintly marked with brownish-black streaks. The bill and the area around the eye are orange-yellow, the eyes are orange, the feathers do not shed easily, and the legs are near-black. The female is paler than the male, with dark streaks on the throat and chest, a brown iris, an orange-yellow bill and black legs.

Voice: its song is sweet and melodious, though less pleasing than that of the European subspecies; the alarm call is similar. In flight it gives a dzeeb call.

3 Habitat and Environment

In the wild the blackbird mainly inhabits forests, and occasionally appears in open grassland, gardens or orchards. Its greatest merit is a loud, beautiful song and a talent for mimicking other birds. For home keeping a myna cage of suitable size is recommended, or a similarly sized homemade bamboo cage; the environment need not be elaborate.

The most important aspects of the captive environment are clean drinking water, a clean cage and clean utensils. Bathe the bird daily in summer; in winter raise the room temperature and ensure a bath at least once a week. During the moult, the diet must be supplemented with vitamins and trace-mineral additives, otherwise the bird often fails to shed its feathers and struggles to survive the winter.

4 Keeping and Breeding

In China the blackbird is distributed mainly in the southwest. A drawback is that they like to forage around rubbish heaps and latrines. For home keeping, do not catch wild adults, because wild-caught adults are highly feral and hard to tame; it is better to take nestlings and hand-rear them. The best breeding period is March to July each year. Male and female nestlings are hard to tell apart; generally the male fledgling shows a clear metallic sheen on its primary feathers, while the female shows none or only a faint sheen.

5 Feeding Guidelines

The blackbird’s diet shifts with the season. In autumn and winter, the harvest season, it feeds mainly on plants; in spring and summer, when insects are abundant, it feeds mainly on insect larvae. Ants, freshwater snails, cockroaches and similar insects are all choice delicacies.

The blackbird eats a great deal. A Soviet ornithologist, Professor Treidaeur, hand-reared one nestling that ate 68 larvae in 14 days, more than 41 percent of its own body weight. Plant foods include camphor tree fruit, fig fruit and various weed seeds.

For home keeping, feed soy products such as plain dried tofu or tofu skin cut into bite-sized pieces and offered on a bamboo skewer; better still, mix fresh minced meat with a powdered softfood into a thick porridge and offer it the same way. Adults are kept on egg-rice or egg-millet as staple feed. Each day offer one dish of soft food (minced meat plus boiled egg plus fruit mash plus vegetable mash plus insects), to be finished within two hours.