" 'T is a woodland enchanted; By no sadder spirit Than blackbirds and thrushes That whistle to cheer it, All day in the bushes." The blackbird of the English poets is like our robin in everything except color. He is familiar, hardy, abundant, thievish, and his habits, manners, and song recall our bird to the life. Our own native blackbirds, the crow blackbird, the rusty grackle, the cowbird, and the red-shouldered starling, are not songsters, even in the latitude allowable to poets; neither are they whistlers, unless we credit them with a "split-whistle," as Thoreau does. The two first named have a sort of musical cackle and gurgle in spring (as at times both our crow and jay have), which is very pleasing, and to which Emerson aptly refers in these lines from "May-Day:"-- "The blackbirds make the maples ring With social cheer and jubilee"-- but it is not a song. The note of the starling in the trees and alders along the creeks and marshes is better calculated to arrest the attention of the casual observer; but it is far from being a song or a whistle like that of the European blackbird, or our robin. Its most familiar call is like the word "BAZIQUE," "BAZIQUE," but it has a wild musical note which Emerson has embalmed in this line:-- "The redwing flutes his O-KA-LEE." Here Emerson discriminates; there is no mistaking his blackbird this time for the European species, though it is true there is nothing fluty or flute-like in the redwing's voice. The flute is mellow, while the "O-KA-LEE" of the starling is strong and sharply accented. The voice of the thrushes (and our robin and the European blackbird are thrushes) is flute-like. Hence the aptness of this line of Tennyson:-- "The mellow ouzel fluted in the elm,"-- the blackbird being the ouzel, or ouzel-cock, as Shakespeare calls him. In the line which precedes this, Tennyson has stamped the cuckoo:-- "To left and right, The cuckoo told his name to all the hills."