on the fourth day of Christmas my true love sent to me............................

four calling birds

mmmmmmmm well I am assuming the author didn't mean a group of birds on a party line, so some research into the true meaning is needed.

I have to say I am finding this very interesting, I had always assumed that this song was simply a love song, so to find out it has biblical references is very enlightening!

ok four calling birds, means the four Gospels or the four evangelists
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
but as they are typically portrayed as Angel, Lion, Ox and Eagle I am not sure how they got demoted to four calling birds!

So I looked up calling birds, apparently its a blackbird - as calling used to be colly and colly is an old word for black - so there you have it. day one you get a partridge, day two you get french hens, day three you get turtle doves and on day four you get blackbirds - plain, noisy, bullying balckbirds! Maybe they had a lovers tiff on day four?