Hen Bird

Here in the UK we tend to take our common or garden blackbirds for granted.  We love to hear them singing but there are plenty of them and their plumage makes them a little uninteresting.  Yet only two centuries ago, blackbirds were a woodland bird.  It is only during that period that they have moved into our urban and suburban spaces which they now share so successfully with us that we take them for granted.

We regularly have blackbirds nesting in the garden, and turf wars between competing males.  But every year around the early Autumn they seem to disappear, only to reappear later in the year.  It seems that, after their moult, if the berry harvests are good, they take brief holiday back into the countryside to fatten themselves up ready for the winter.

It also seems that the UK's blackbird population increases over winter as their Scandinavian relatives migrate here to overwinter.  Most UK blackbirds don't migrate from the UK,  (although they might move to more clement parts of the country).