"It was just like a cockfight," he said. "There, suddenly, at our small pool were seven, yes seven blackbirds having a communal bath. Ducking deep into the four or five inches of water, squabbling, chasing each other away and now and then a couple would rise in the air, claws out as they faced each other perpendicularly and pecked and pecked, with wings outspread. But the odd thing is that there haven't been more than one or two blackbirds at the evening ablutions so far this year. No nest in the enclosed gardens. Yet, suddenly, seven, all throwing their weight around. More importantly, exactly the same performance the next evening. Then it dawned on the observers: we were witnessing an incursion of migrating birds as winter set in; possibly from Scandinavia or other parts of northern Europe. A week or so ago we saw how French shooting men reap a great harvesting of thrushes as they migrate south - mostly, it seemed from that report, song thrushes, mistle thrushes and field fares and redwings. But blackbirds, too. Apparently it was quite a revelation when this fact was proved about a century ago. Most Irish people thought, it seems that the friendly birds around their gardens or fields were as local as themselves, but a survey of birds killed by dashing themselves against lighthouses and lightships convinced the naturalist R. M. Barrington that many of our birds - even including the minute goldcrest - may often be migrants and not purely local inhabitants. Mind you, when you find, as one family did find, that the blackbirds in their garden carried in each generation several white streaked feathers, it would seem to prove that there are a lot of them who stay around year in, year out.
And the blackbird is one of the most frequently mentioned birds in the old monastic poetry such as we find in Kings, Lords and Commons, translated by Frank O'Connor. There is The Blackbird of Belfast Lough: "What little throat / Has framed that note, / What gold beak shot it far away? / A blackbird on / His leafy throne / Tossed it alone / Across the bay.
In the bad old days, when it snowed, boys would prop up the garden riddle with a stick, attach a string to it put some bread under the riddle and then, when the birds came to feed, would pull the string and have their birds. Really just for inspection and to hold warm in your hand rather than any mischief. Now we have films by Eamon de Buitlear and David Attenborough which bring the details into our rooms. But, lovely birds the blackbirds. (The Barrington report is given in David Cabot's splendid Ireland, A Natural History.)