The Bird-catcher and the Blackbird

An alternative tradition dating back to the Greek Anthology maintains that the blackbird is under the special protection of the gods, and cannot be trapped in nets.

Ahiqar has been betrayed by his adoptive son Nadan and among the reproaches for his conduct appears this reference: "A snare was set upon a dunghill and there came a sparrow and looked at it and said, 'What doest thou here?'

[4] There the story is told of a lark (lodola), while a blackbird (merle) is the bird named in the nearly contemporary 1582 French edition of Aesop's fables,[5] remaining so through the following centuries.

In his History of British Birds, Thomas Bewick says that blackbirds "readily suffer themselves to be caught with bird-lime, nooses and all sorts of snares".

[8] In general it was trapped for caging as a songbird rather than for food, but there existed an ancient Greek tradition that the songster was under the special protection of the gods and that nets could not hold it.

[10] Finally, in the poem by Paulus Silentiarus, where a fieldfare and a blackbird are netted, it is Artemis herself, the goddess of hunting, who frees the songbird.