A brown Blackbird and a Marsh Tit not in a marsh
There’s a brown Blackbird at Stover Country Park. It’s cold and it’s intent on eating some seed which someone has left on the handrail. I really must get a guide to plumage in Blackbirds. I can recognise the males fine, after all, they are black. It’s the difference between juveniles and females which I’m not sure of.
Anyway, here’s a brown Blackbird:
![Blackbird - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Blackbird-Stover-The-Hall-of-Einar-6834-725x483.jpg)
Looking closer and the stiff rictal bristles which surround its gape are wonderful. So is the glorious yellow eye ring:
![Blackbird - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Blackbird-Stover-The-Hall-of-Einar-6834-2-725x483.jpg)
As it turns, one of its cousins arrives. It’s a Marsh Tit. Marsh Tits don’t live in marshes.
![Blackbird - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Blackbird-Stover-The-Hall-of-Einar-6835-725x483.jpg)
What is it with names that mean people have to keep explaining them because they simply don’t fit? It’s just as true of our human world.
Over forty years ago I wrote all about Blackbirds in my childhood nature notebooks:
![Blackbird - The Hall of Einar - (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Blackbird-2-The-Hall-of-Einar-photograph-c-2016-David-Bailey-not-the.jpg)
I still love seeing them as much.