I have all the windows open to the fresh air this morning and the sounds of birdlife are all around. Somewhere amongst the buttercup-filled pastures to the west, curlews are calling; their haunting, falling call one of the great pleasures of an upland spring. And occasionally too, I hear the faint piping of an oystercatcher in the opposite direction towards the River Rede. Earlier, a linnet sat on the sunny ridge of a neighbour’s roof; its breast so puffed up in song that it looked exactly as if it were wearing a Pickwickian-red waistcoat, two or three sizes too small. In the garden, coal and blue tits, siskins and a solitary female redpoll, a nuthatch and a great spotted woodpecker, chaffinches and goldfinches are visiting the feeders and bird table, flitting hurriedly in and out again with food for young which I think I can sometimes hear nearby but can never see through the mass of leaves which now cover the poplars. And then, into the midst of this harmony, a jackdaw elbows in, frightening away all the small birds to tension-filled waiting areas in the surrounding trees before casually stepping onto the peanut feeder and breakfasting on the nuts.
I don’t suppose this behaviour is based on anything other than opportunism; the jackdaw sees the chance of an easy meal and takes it. And for all their strutting style, I still prefer jackdaws to starlings; I just wish they would go and feed somewhere else!
The Jackdaw (Corvus monedula) on the peanut feeder
