What blackbird was that?

[Geoffrey Dabb <>]

Thank you Andrew.  Something I should have checked.  However, well done Wikipedia !  The GWB comes up when you click on ‘blackbird’ in the entry.  Ebird shows a healthy spatter of records for the species around the yogi-filled centre of Rishikesh.  Another unknown is what Paul might have been smoking at the time.

 

 

 

 

From: Andrew Taylor <>
Sent: Saturday, August 5, 2023 10:21 AM
To: Geoffrey Dabb <>
Subject: Re: [Canberrabirds] What blackbird was that?

 

HI Geoffrey

A side note if Paul did hear a blackbird in India probably Gray-winged Blackbird 

or perhaps another thrush, but he would have been outside  Eurasian Blackbird range
andrew

 

On Fri, Aug 4, 2023 at 10:29 AM Geoffrey Dabb <> wrote:

Among the many occasion I have regretted not having a better ear for bird sounds was the one this morning when Paull McCartney’s ‘Blackbird’ was played on Radio National in connection with the forthcoming tour of the performer.  There could be more than one reason why the featured bird did not sound, to my ear, like the blackbirds around here.  It seems that particular populations of a species can develop a dialect of their own (third link below), as with transplanted fragments of the human race.  Quite a large subject.  Apparently Paul got the blackbird song idea when he heard one in India.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbird_(Beatles_song)

 

https://www.audubon.org/news/what-beatles-song-blackbird-was-really-about

 

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.643343/full