Skip to main content Skip to navigation
Home
Today's Show: Rhinoceros Hornbill
Rhinocerous Hornbill
Listen In
  • Today's Show
  • Listen
    • Daily Shows
    • Threatened
    • Grouse
    • BirdNote Presents
    • How to Listen
  • Explore
    • Field Notes
    • Sights & Sounds
    • Birdwatching
    • Resources for Educators
  • How to Help Birds
    • At Home
    • In Your Community
    • Success Stories
  • About
    • The BirdNote Story
    • The Team
    • Partners
    • For Radio Stations
    • Funding
    • Contact Us
    • FAQs
    • Support BirdNote
  • Donate

Twelve Days of Christmas

A partridge in a pear tree -- and what else?
Subscribe to the Podcast
Download
  • Share This:
  • Share to Facebook
  • Share to Twitter
  • Share to Email
© Tom Munson

The Twelve Days of Christmas began as a French love song. The song's age is uncertain, but likely dates to at least the Sixteenth Century. A woman's generous "true love" delivers gifts over the twelve days. The first seven days' gifts are all birds. The "five gold rings" were gold Ring-necked Pheasants. And the partridge in a pear tree was probably the Red-legged Partridge, a cousin to this Gray Partridge.

BirdNote wishes you Happy Holidays!

  • Full Transcript
  • Credits
BirdNote®
Birding “The Twelve Days of Christmas”

Written by Bob Sundstrom

This is BirdNote!
[A few bars of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”]
‘Tis the season, and high time to recognize a traditional Christmas song that teems with birds.
[“Twelve Days of Christmas”]
  “The Twelve Days of Christmas” began as a French secular love song. Sung by a woman, her generous “True Love” delivers gifts over the Twelve Days, then reckoned as sunset December Twenty-fifth (the birth of Christ) to sunset January Sixth (the arrival of the Magi). The song’s age is uncertain, but likely dates to at least the Sixteenth Century.
The first seven days’ gifts are all birds. That alliterative “partridge in a pear tree” was probably the Red-legged Partridge. [Gray Partridge] Day Two’s Turtle Doves [Eurasian Collared Doves] are oddly out of season, having migrated out of France to Africa for the winter. The three French hens were domestic fowl. [chickens]
The four “calling birds” were originally “colly birds,” or birds black as coal. This refers to Europe’s Blackbird, [European Blackbird] an inky cousin of our familiar robin. Day Five’s “gold rings” were traditionally pictured as gold Ring-necked Pheasants. [Ring-necked Pheasant] That leaves six domestic geese and seven water-loving Mute Swans, the common regional species.
[“Twelve Days of Christmas”]
Clearly, birds do bring joy to the Christmas season.
###
Calls of the birds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. For Red-legged Partridge we had to substitute a Gray Partridge recorded in England (http://www.garden-birds.co.uk/birds/red-legged_partridge.htm); Eurasian Collard Dove by A.B. van den Berg; European Blackbird by M.P. McChesney; Ring-necked Pheasant by G.F. Budney.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2013 Tune In to Nature.org     December 2017     Narrator: Frank Corrado

ID# 122305xmasKPLU       christmas-01-FCr

Bob Sundstrom
Writer
Frank Corrado
Narrator
Tom Munson
Photographer
Support More Shows Like This

Related Resources

Learn a lot more about ALL of these birds -- from GrrlScientist at Forbes.comRing-necked Pheasants - More at All About BirdsA Ring-necked Pheasant Crowing and Preening Gray Partridge - More at All About BirdsEurasian Collared-Dove foragingEurasian Collared-Doves in close up, in snowy scene

More About These Birds

Gray Partridge (Perdix perdix)

Perdix perdix

Sights & Sounds

Birds connect us with the joy and wonder of nature. By telling vivid, sound-rich stories about birds and the challenges they face, BirdNote inspires listeners to care about the natural world – and take steps to protect it.

Support BirdNote

  • Daily Shows
  • Field Notes
  • BirdNote Presents
  • Sights & Sounds
  • About BirdNote
  • Contact BirdNote
Sign up for our newsletter!
  • BirdNote on Facebook
  • BirdNote on Twitter
  • BirdNote on Instagram

Copyright 2020. All rights reserved.

  • Privacy Policy