Turdus merula
A glossy songster with a bright orange bill.
Size: 24-25 cm | Habitat: Garden Birds | Season: All year
The male blackbird is jet black with a striking orange-yellow bill and eye-ring, while females are a warm, streaky brown, often mistaken for a different species entirely. Their fluting, melodic song is one of the highlights of a British spring evening.
Male: all-black with orange bill · Female: dark brown, paler streaked throat · medium-large, long tail · hops and runs on lawns
Blackbirds forage on open ground, tossing leaf litter aside to find worms and insects. Males sing from rooftops and treetops at dawn and dusk, especially in spring.
Blackbirds are famous for singing some of the most beautiful, flute-like phrases of any British bird — often the last voice heard at dusk.
The Blackbird (Turdus merula) shows one of the clearest examples of plumage difference between the sexes in British birds: glossy all-black males with a bright orange-yellow bill and eye-ring, against warm brown, softly streaked females that are frequently mistaken for an entirely different species. Its rich, unhurried song, often delivered from a rooftop at dusk, is considered one of the most beautiful in Britain.
Blackbirds forage mainly on the ground, flicking through leaf litter and lawns for worms, insects, and fallen fruit, and are highly territorial, with resident males defending the same patch of garden or woodland edge year after year. UK breeding numbers are boosted every winter by an influx of continental migrants escaping harsher weather further north and east in Europe.
Understanding the blackbird reveals how striking sexual dimorphism, ground-feeding behaviour, and seasonal migration combine in one of the most familiar and best-loved songbirds in Britain.
🟢 Conservation status: Green (UK Birds of Conservation Concern 5)
Green-listed and widespread across almost every UK habitat with cover and open ground. Blackbirds are vulnerable to cat predation and can suffer locally during droughts, when hard ground makes worms harder to reach.