The spectre if a silent spring loomed when I listened in vain for the beautiful, lilting song of the blackbird.
The metaphor that draws on the title of Rachel Carson’s acclaimed book on environmental destruction was not entirely apposite. It was not spring, it was autumn and I was far from where the refrain of the blackbird bookends the start and end of my day. I was in London, and not Hobart.
The blackbird, of course, was imported to Tasmania from Britain in colonial times and so as an Englishman choosing to make Tasmania my home I link the bird of British folklore and custom to both places.
So accustomed to its transplanted environment of gum and wattle instead of beech and oak the blackbird has even developed a song infused with an Australian “accent”, a little like myself.
Although on trips to London in the past I’ve listened intently to discern the difference, on this visit in October I did not get the opportunity. The blackbirds were not only lost to the ear, they were out of sight.
The dearth of blackbirds – and to a degree other once familiar garden bird species – confirmed a report I had read in a British newspaper that blackbirds in south-east England are in sharp decline, with London’s population falling by more than 40 per cent in only five years.
Britain’s unusually warm and dry springs in recent years have made it difficult for blackbirds to probe for worms in baked earth and this has been given as the principal reason for their decline. But there has been a double whammy also attributed to a warming climate. Since 2020 a virus spread by a mosquito species arriving from Africa via continental Europe has been detected affecting blackbirds in southern counties of England.
Like many other common and familiar species, blackbirds evolved in woods and forests but then learned to take advantage of the plentiful food and suitable nesting sites in urban, suburban and rural gardens. They often feed on lawns, using their powerful beaks to dig for earthworms and other invertebrates beneath the surface of the soil.
In Australia blackbirds are known to the raise the ire of tidy and fastidious gardeners by digging in and turning over mulch spread on flowerbeds, spreading bark and dried leaves over lawns and paths.
Considering the blackbirds – members of the thrush family – evolved as wet woodland birds it is surprising that they have survived the great brown land of Australia but in my experience the wetter areas towards the west of Tasmania and especially the constantly watered and pampered gardens of suburbia certainly suits them.
My garden is a happy blackbird home and straining to see and hear them in both mine and their previous stamping grounds in London I was relieved to hear the sweet blackbird song on my return to Hobart.