The Fourth Day of Christmas

On the fourth day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Four calling birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves,
And a partridge in a pear tree.

I like to think that the composer of this song was a woman. Today her true love sent her more birds...four calling birds. However, they're not what you might think. According to the Wikipedia entry, over the years some errors have slipped into the original version of the song; one of them occurs in today's verse. The four calling birds were originally four colly birds, another word for a blackbird.

With that in mind, I started thinking about blackbirds. A little research revealed that the colly birds in the song (Old World Blackbirds) aren't the same as New World blackbirds. They're actually a completely different species. Although both groups contain birds of all colors, many of them are black, like the grackles, cowbirds, and occasional red-winged blackbirds I see in my area.

Other information:

• In the nursery rhyme Sing a Song of Sixpence four and twenty of them were baked in a pie.

• The SR-71 Blackbird plane was a reconnaissance aircraft used from the 1960s through the 1990s.

• The Blackbyrds was a rhythm and blues group in the 1970s.

• "Blackbird" is a Beatles song from the album The Beatles (AKA The White Album).

Time for a sing-along:

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

Black bird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
all your life
you were only waiting for this moment to be free

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise,
You were only waiting for this moment to arise,
You were only waiting for this moment to arise