izzarina,
As someone who has rather more time in playing various recorders than I do whistles (and being aware that there seems to be some real animosity about recorders here.....) all I can say is you will find that each has its own strengths and weaknesses.
I find, going the other way, that being able to just swap bodies on my Syn whistle head to change keys (presuming the tune I want to play is without many accidentals) is easy and it does make playing tunes in a particular key easy to just have those notes.
But one recorder can cover all keys as it's fully chromatic (which is where those extra holes come in - the bottom two pairs give you effectively automatic half-holing). Being fully chromatic, accidentals in tunes are not a problem (relatively).
And, even an average recorder has a solid and dependable range of two octaves and a step, though adittedly the fingerings up near the top of the second octave start to make no apparent sense.
(And yes - I am aware that it is theoretically possible to get a full chromatic range from a whistle with various combinations of half-holing and cross fingerings.)
Like the whistle there is one set of fingerings, but depending on the recorder it sounds different notes. For commonly available recorders there are two bell notes: C and F. The soprano recorder (and the tenor, which is just an octave lower) have C as the bell note. Think of these as similar to a high C and low C whistle - all fingers down are C, pick up the right little finger for D, the next one for E and so forth, though if the recorder has "baroque" fingering, the F is a cross-fingering. This is not as bad as it sounds....
Up at the top of the octave the all-fingers-off note is usually an out-of-tune C# - that fingering is not normally used on recorders.
The alto recorder, and the one-octave higher sopranino, and the one octave LOWER bass all sound F as their bell note, and C is the three fingers on top down only.
I do wish there were as vibrant and fun an online community for recorders as C&F is, but I haven't found it. There are a couple of the more traditional e-mail lists, and they often get into arguments over similar things there - if you substitute "historically informed" for "traditional".
But since my interest in the recorder is that I like its sound, whether it's in baroque music or in Mannheim Steamroller Christmas albums, I just ignore all that stuff. And my interest in the whistle is IT'S sound, and Irish traditional music is only one aspect of that as well, so I tend to learn what I can from the debates but not worry too much about it.
Actually, my main use for both types instruments is in a small instrumental and vocal ensemble that leads our congregation in song at one Mass a week. Now that I've discovered the whistle I am using it where my own musical sense (and the key and number of the accidentals of the song) lead me to use it.
So, with all of this, I hope you will come to enjoy your gift. I will warn you that whatever the recorder equivalent of WhOA may be called, it's MORE expensive.
Oh, I did get a Mary Bergin CD for Christmas....
) that it was NOT a whistle, but a R*C@RD#* !!!!! Who had put such a thing under the tree and then addressed it to me???? What kind of a twisted mind would even THINK of such a thing? Of course it was my husband 
It really is a shame how those that are not affected by WhOA just don't get those that are 
