whistler

What it means

1. Someone or something that whistles, or who plays a whistle as a musical instrument.
2. Any of several passerine birds of the genera Pachycephala and Coracornis, of Australasia and the western Pacific.
3. Any bird that whistles or is noted for its whistling vocalisations (applied regionally to various specific species).

   The lether-winged Bat, dayes enimy, / The ruefull Strich, still waiting on the bere, / The Whistler shrill, that who so heares, doth dy […]

   1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

In a sentence

The lether-winged Bat, dayes enimy, / The ruefull Strich, still waiting on the bere, / The Whistler shrill, that who so heares, doth dy […]

1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

Where it comes from

1. Old Englishhwistlere“a player on a flute; a piper”
2. Middle Englishwhisteler
3. Englishwhistler

From Middle English whisteler, whistlar, whystelare, from Old English hwistlere (“a player on a flute; a piper”), equivalent to whistle + -er.