I thought I had finished my series of 'Surprises' with number 18 but the recent weather led to the surprises recorded below.
The heavy snowfall in my home town in early March was easily the heaviest snow since 2013 and probably surpassed that of 2013 by a good margin (see photo) and it caused some radical changes of behaviour in two of our local birds.
Jackdaws (Corvus monedula) are by no means rarities in our home town. Indeed for around 30 years after we moved to our present home, they could be seen each evening flying south at around 16:00, their calls alerting us to their passage and to the time of day. This suddenly stopped happening a few years ago, we guess due to a change if the field system where they foraged, and since then their appearances have been irregular and unpredictable. Nevertheless, they do still come fairly frequently, and if there is a strong wind blowing they delight us with their aerobatics. Typically they will perform some king of twisting, tumbling dive, at the end of which they turn into the wind and allow it to lift them rapidly back to their former altitude, all of this accompanied by calls that sound excited and playful to us.
Yes this is an anthropomorphic interpretation, and maybe these airborne evolutions do play some subtle role in pairing or flock-cohesion, but they just sound and look so joyful we find it hard to discard.
What had been an inviolable rule until a couple of days ago is that they never came down to land. So it was a huge surprise when one flew down to our bird feeding station, grabbed a lump of suet cake, and then perched in our Birch Tree for a while before flying off with it. Through my SF 8x32s the silvery sheen on the back of its neck shone in the weak sunshine, contrasting with its black forehead and crown, and it took me back through my memories to my first encounter with a wild bird, also a Jackdaw, when I was 4 years’ old and one landed only a yard away from me and stayed for several minutes.
On the island of Islay, where we stay there is a resident flock of Jackdaws, often accompanied by a handful of Choughs Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax. These Jackdaws are highly vocal too and can often be heard a couple of minutes before they come into view. The Choughs’ call is very different being less strident and sounding like ‘Chow’. This is so distinctive it makes us wonder if the tendency for most folks to pronounce Chough as “Chuff” is misguided and that “Chuff” should rhyme with ‘plough’ and so also rhyme with their call.
If we were stunned by the arrival of a Jackdaw not only landing in our back garden but taking food from our feeder like any old garden bird, were even more startled when a Jay (Garrulus glandarius) flew down to our little Rowan tree. To the east of our house there is a substantial wood and from this wood there is a straggling line of oak trees that runs along the bottom of our back garden and has occasionally brought us good views of woodland species such as Greater Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) and Jay. Through the Zeisses the Jay’s substantial black moustaches stood out against the pink background and the electric-blue and black on the wing coverts shimmered as if electrically-powered. It is an extraordinary colour scheme for a bird that is more frequently detected by its raucous voice (a feature hinted at by its scientific name) as you walk through a wood, rather than spotting it by its pink jump-suit and 1970’s moustaches. Just like the Jackdaws, the very notion of a Jay landing less than a handful of metres from our house would have seemed like a fantasy a couple of days ago.
It just goes to show what a substantial fall of snow can do.
Lee
The heavy snowfall in my home town in early March was easily the heaviest snow since 2013 and probably surpassed that of 2013 by a good margin (see photo) and it caused some radical changes of behaviour in two of our local birds.
Jackdaws (Corvus monedula) are by no means rarities in our home town. Indeed for around 30 years after we moved to our present home, they could be seen each evening flying south at around 16:00, their calls alerting us to their passage and to the time of day. This suddenly stopped happening a few years ago, we guess due to a change if the field system where they foraged, and since then their appearances have been irregular and unpredictable. Nevertheless, they do still come fairly frequently, and if there is a strong wind blowing they delight us with their aerobatics. Typically they will perform some king of twisting, tumbling dive, at the end of which they turn into the wind and allow it to lift them rapidly back to their former altitude, all of this accompanied by calls that sound excited and playful to us.
Yes this is an anthropomorphic interpretation, and maybe these airborne evolutions do play some subtle role in pairing or flock-cohesion, but they just sound and look so joyful we find it hard to discard.
What had been an inviolable rule until a couple of days ago is that they never came down to land. So it was a huge surprise when one flew down to our bird feeding station, grabbed a lump of suet cake, and then perched in our Birch Tree for a while before flying off with it. Through my SF 8x32s the silvery sheen on the back of its neck shone in the weak sunshine, contrasting with its black forehead and crown, and it took me back through my memories to my first encounter with a wild bird, also a Jackdaw, when I was 4 years’ old and one landed only a yard away from me and stayed for several minutes.
On the island of Islay, where we stay there is a resident flock of Jackdaws, often accompanied by a handful of Choughs Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax. These Jackdaws are highly vocal too and can often be heard a couple of minutes before they come into view. The Choughs’ call is very different being less strident and sounding like ‘Chow’. This is so distinctive it makes us wonder if the tendency for most folks to pronounce Chough as “Chuff” is misguided and that “Chuff” should rhyme with ‘plough’ and so also rhyme with their call.
If we were stunned by the arrival of a Jackdaw not only landing in our back garden but taking food from our feeder like any old garden bird, were even more startled when a Jay (Garrulus glandarius) flew down to our little Rowan tree. To the east of our house there is a substantial wood and from this wood there is a straggling line of oak trees that runs along the bottom of our back garden and has occasionally brought us good views of woodland species such as Greater Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) and Jay. Through the Zeisses the Jay’s substantial black moustaches stood out against the pink background and the electric-blue and black on the wing coverts shimmered as if electrically-powered. It is an extraordinary colour scheme for a bird that is more frequently detected by its raucous voice (a feature hinted at by its scientific name) as you walk through a wood, rather than spotting it by its pink jump-suit and 1970’s moustaches. Just like the Jackdaws, the very notion of a Jay landing less than a handful of metres from our house would have seemed like a fantasy a couple of days ago.
It just goes to show what a substantial fall of snow can do.
Lee
