Common blackbird

Blackbirds love worms.

They look in the grass and pull worms out of the ground. They also eat bugs, berries and fruit.

Blackbirds feed mostly on the ground, and earthworms are one of their main foods. They also eat insects and their larvae, poking into the soil and flipping over dead leaves to find hidden creatures.

When there are berries and fruit, blackbirds eat those too, and they sometimes visit bird tables in gardens. Parents feed their chicks earthworms and other small animals.

Blackbirds are flexible, adaptable foragers. The IUCN assessment gives a diet mainly of invertebrates, chiefly earthworms and insects and their larvae, along with fruits and seeds and occasionally small vertebrates.

The BTO notes that the species forages on the ground, turning over leaf litter, probing soil and visiting flat feeders such as bird tables. Diet may matter for courtship too: Animal Diversity Web reports that the orange color of a male's bill comes from carotenoids in his food, and that females tend to prefer males with more orange bills.

On summer evenings, father blackbirds sing from the tops of trees and roofs.

Father blackbirds guard their patch. They chase other blackbirds away.

On spring and summer evenings, male blackbirds sing a slow, mellow, fluting song, often from a high perch. A male defends his territory by running straight at any rival that comes in.

In courtship, a male bows his head and runs in short sprints with his bill open, singing quietly. Scientists have found that bright city lights, which make the days seem longer, can change when city blackbirds start to breed.

Males sing their fluting, melodic song from high perches, a familiar sound of summer evenings (BTO). Territorial males drive off intruders by running head-first at them, and courtship involves sprints and head-bows with the bill open and a subdued song (Animal Diversity Web).

Scientists have studied urban blackbirds closely. Animal Diversity Web cites Partecke and colleagues (2005), who found that artificial light in cities, by mimicking longer days, influences when blackbirds start to breed and mature. City birds are also exposed to frequent disturbance from people, dogs and magpies, which can reduce their foraging time.

There are lots and lots of blackbirds.

They are doing well in many places. But in some places, like London, there are fewer than before.

The blackbird is one of the most common birds in Europe, and the IUCN lists it as Least Concern. Its numbers in Europe have grown in recent years, and about 5 million pairs bred in the United Kingdom in 2016.

It is not doing well everywhere, though. In Britain, numbers fell until the mid-1990s and then partly recovered, and they have recently dropped sharply in London. Changes in farming may be one reason for losses on farmland.

The IUCN's 2024 global assessment lists Turdus merula as Least Concern, with a very preliminary estimate of 145 to 220 million mature individuals and an increasing trend: the European population, about 80 percent of the range, rose moderately over three generations.

Local declines are noted. The IUCN suggests agricultural intensification may explain greater declines on British farmland, hunting may explain scarcity in Spain's Cantabrian Mountains, and lower breeding success may lie behind declines in the Netherlands. The BTO reports a 21 percent decrease in the UK breeding population from 1967 to 2024, after a fall to the mid-1990s and a partial recovery, with a sharp recent decline in London.