Shy visitors

It is early and the local jackdaws have sneaked into the garden to take beak-fulls from the suet balls that reside in next-door’s bird feeders. This is the only time of the day that I see these playful birds using the garden and the food presented in the hanging feeders. It is a pattern that is repeated in many other urban gardens, the jackdaws seemingly shy in their feeding habits and restricting visits to that quiet time before the town is properly awake. This may change as the season progresses and as the birds respond to the growing demands of their newly hatched chicks. As the demand for food increases, so the jackdaws become increasingly bold, dropping down into narrow urban gardens from the safety of their rooftop kingdoms.

As the semi-colonial nature of their urban nest sites reveals jackdaws are sociable birds. All across this old part of town there are pairs of jackdaws, each occupying its own chimney pot within which a scruffy nest of sticks and other material will have been constructed. The bigger the cavity in which the nest has been placed the more nesting material that will be added. No matter how big the nest, there will be a smaller nest cup, lined with wool or other fine material and it is into this that the clutch of 4-5 eggs is laid. Each egg is pale blue in colour, with darker spots and splodges over the surface.

Jackdaw chicks are particularly unattractive, at least until they are properly feathered. With their bony-faced features and potbellies, they are prehistoric in their appearance and, seemingly, have an appetite to match. The young grow quickly but remain in the nest for about a month, meaning that things can get a little crowded if the nest cavity is a small one.

The jackdaw pair bond is long-lasting one and individuals will remain together even if they have been unsuccessful in their nesting attempts over several years. It has been speculated that the pair bond is essential for a jackdaw because of the amount of effort that has to go into provisioning the brood of chicks with invertebrate food. Regardless of the reason, it is a delight to watch the birds interact with one another.

Cacophony

As the afternoon slips towards dusk I become aware of increasing numbers of jackdaws in the air. Several flocks, each numbering many hundreds of individuals, can be seen against the spreading smudge of red sky. Many smaller groups are also present, together with the odd single bird playing catch-up, all adding to the growing sense that something is about to happen. Over the coming hour more and more birds begin to appear, draining out of the surrounding farmland and swelling the gathering well into four-figures. Then, just before dusk, this flurry of black bodies piles noisily into a large stand of poplars. This will form their roost for the night, as it has for each night of the winter so far.

So intense is the noise of the calling jackdaws that it becomes impossible to separate out individual birds; it is a wall of noise, like great waves pounding into a million rounded pebbles. In the near darkness I stand at the edge of the plantation, my hands cupped to my ears to focus the sound. The experience is intense and my world becomes the cacophony of these calling birds. Then, as if somewhere in the wood a plug has been pulled, there is silence, a silence that is both abrupt and jarring. The evening performance is over, the birds are at roost.

Taking my hands away from my ears I become aware of other sounds and shapes, most notably of woodcock leaving the shelter of the wood to begin their nocturnal foraging. Had these rather unusual waders set their alarm clocks by the arrival of the jackdaws or had I been so focussed on the jackdaws that I had missed earlier departures? Either way, half a dozen of these birds flick across the track to be silhouetted against the sky.

It is time for me to turn towards home, the clear winter sky affording me enough light to follow the track back towards the parked car without the need for a torch, the use of which would have felt intrusive. Come morning and the jackdaws would depart to begin their day, while the woodcock would return to the safety of the wood, a changing of the guard in this little corner of the fenland landscape.

Red in beak and claw

I received an email the other day from a lady who had witnessed a jackdaw catch and kill an adult chaffinch in her garden. Like many other members of the crow family, jackdaws are somewhat opportunistic in their feeding habits, taking mostly invertebrates but with fruits, seeds, scraps and carrion added to the diet when available. Very occasionally they will take eggs and young birds or other small vertebrates but they are not really equipped to tackle adult songbirds, which are generally considered to be too agile and too difficult to catch. This is a behaviour that I have seen just once, during a particular cold winter, when two jackdaws harassed and finally caught a chaffinch.

Such murderous behaviour has been reported for carrion crow, magpie and even rook but it remains rare. What interests me about such reports is just how often the behaviour is regarded as unnatural and, therefore, ‘wrong’. In fact, I have even come across cases where the reporter portrays the would-be predator as acting with evil intent; it is as if the act of predation was, in this instance, deliberately malicious. Rather than saying anything about the predator, such statements and responses say more about us and the prejudices that we hold with regard to the natural world. I have noted before how many observers will not tolerate the act of a predatory sparrowhawk killing a blackbird but remain indifferent to a predatory blackbird killing an earthworm.

Such double standards come from deeply rooted prejudices, which favour fluffy or feathered creatures above those that are cold-blooded. We have created a hierarchy of favourites, an unpleasant form of species-ism whereby some species are branded as unwelcome and their acts not tolerated. When a favoured species, such as jackdaw or great spotted woodpecker, takes another bird, the act is seen as all the more shocking because it falls outside of the image we have created for that bird. Yet, most creatures show some degree of opportunism in their diet: great tits have been known to feed on roosting bats and deer to take the chicks of ground-nesting birds, so maybe it’s time that we came to terms with the fact that nature is ‘red in tooth and claw.’

The stillness of dawn

Even by my usual standards it is early; the combination of an elderly dog and a warm and stuffy night sees me up and about not long after four. Outside, in the garden, the air is delightfully cool and the town sits under a stillness that, for now, seems to suggest that its ownership rests with me. The dawn chorus of earlier in the year has subsided and it is the hypnotically drowsy calls of woodpigeons that echo across the dawn, disturbed only by the occasional chaffinch or dunnock.

The male from our resident pair of blackbirds sits in silhouette on the fence, a stroke of orange bill on an otherwise flat canvas. His plumage shows the signs of a long breeding season and the efforts of raising more than one brood of chicks. Scruffy in his appearance, it will not be long until the annual moult and the replacement of rough and battered feathers. The young from the latest breeding attempt are somewhere in the garden and they will soon start to call for food with the nagging persistence of hungry children which, after all, is what they are. Other young birds will soon arrive; streaky-plumaged young greenfinches in the company of their parents will come to take sunflower hearts from the hanging feeders and yellow-cheeked blue and great tits will join them to take advantage of this reliable food source.

All of a sudden there is a brief moment of commotion as the jackdaws arrive. This gang of a dozen or so avian ruffians squabbles over scraps of food and tufts of discarded dog hair. For these birds the breeding season continues and there are hungry young to feed and nesting attempts to be completed. The jackdaws are always an early visitor, a pattern repeated in many other gardens across the county, and they only rarely visit the garden later in the day. It is a little too early for many insects to be on the wing. Once the sun makes her appearance and stirs the borders with her warmth, the bumblebees and hoverflies will emerge to jostle around the blooms. It is going to be another warm day but for now I can enjoy the cool stillness of dawn.

Jackdaws busy setting up home

Leaving work the other afternoon my attention was caught by the sight of two dozen Jackdaws riding on the breeze. There is nothing unusual in this you might think but the flock was loose in its formation and made up of discernable couples. Each pair of birds was separated from every other pair by a certain amount of airspace and it was clear that these were breeding partners, possibly displaying in the sky above the nest sites soon to be occupied.

In fact, there has already been a certain amount of work on the nest sites used last year, with birds collecting new nesting material in the form of twigs and clumps of fur, brushed out from winter coats by the dog owners who walk along this part of the river. Jackdaw nests are untidy in their construction and can be surprisingly large. The birds seem to adopt an approach whereby they keep adding sticks to the nest cavity until it is full and ready for lining with softer material. I remember once checking an old Barn Owl nest site in the attic of a ruined cottage out in the fens; the owls were no longer there but the Jackdaws had moved in and constructed a nest that was at least eight feet across and four feet tall. It was a truly amazing construction.

Although the sight of these birds flying in tandem had suggested to me that the pairs had only recently formed, this was almost certainly not the case. New pairs probably become established in late autumn or early winter and you can see Jackdaw pairs in pretty much any month of the year. This might suggest that pairs remain together for life but changes in partnership do occur from one year to the next. Birds may continue to use established nest sites over long periods of time and it is easy to see why such large nests can accumulate in some cases. Jackdaws are very adaptable when it comes to the choice of nest sites, although very few end up constructing a nest out in the open. Most nest in cavities, either natural holes in trees or those accidentally created by humans. Jackdaws can be found nesting in disused mine shafts, church towers, chimneys and even nest boxes, specially erected for their use. They are gregarious birds and, if conditions allow, you will often find several pairs nesting in close proximity

Since Jackdaws can initiate egg laying from the beginning of April, they are one of the first birds to really get going with the arrival of spring. Most pairs, however, start in the second half of April so expect to see some collecting twigs over the next few weeks.