Jackdaw skull

 I found this bird's skull in Ashes quarry, Stanhope, Weardale a couple of days ago. I think it's a jackdaw's skull - it's about the right size (6.5 cm long), the beak is the right shape and it was under a site where jackdaws often nest. A beautiful object, light but strong, with a large brain case as befits such an intelligent bird species.

Gleaners

A scene I passed on my walk a few days ago reminded me of this famous painting called The Gleaners, by Jean-Francois Millet.

Gleaning was the tradition where the poor were allowed onto fields after a harvest to collect anything edible that had been left behind. It survived in one form until my childhood in the 1950s, when my grandmother worked on a farm in a rural part of the country that was in some ways still quite feudal. After the wheat harvest all the farmhands and their families waited around the field while the harvester paused before 'the last cut', which left just a rectangle of corn in the middle of the field, full of rabbits. Then the harvester would start again and the rabbits would be shot as they raced away, and given to families. My grandmother was highly skilled at skinning rabbits with a wicked little knife that she sharpened on the doorstep, giving me their tails afterwards.

By Jean-François Millet. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20111149

The gleaners I've been watching are birds. Until a few days ago these fields were lush green meadows of cultivated forage grasses, tall enough to hide a hare. Then, in the space of a couple of days of fine, sunny weather the grass was cut, turned and dried and carried away to make silage, leaving the fields shorn and yellow. 

So now the fields are full of birds, come to glean the insects and soil animals that are suddenly so accessible. Easy pickings, to feed their fledglings.

There are jackdaws  ..... and ...

Scores of rooks from the local rookeries, and some crows 

And flocks of starlings that keep themselves apart from the other gleaners.

And even a few curlews, flying in from rough pastures that are not cut for silage....

Jackdaws

There are people who don't like jackdaws, sometimes because of deep-rooted superstitions about bad luck that are attached to these birds. Maybe, too, because of that beady eyed-stare which can make people a little uneasy. These are birds that seem to like making eye-contact.

But, seen in the right light (and doesn't that apply to almost anything?!), their undertaker-black plumage can be rather beautiful, shot through with blue and purple iridescence when the sun catches it at the right angle.

They do seem to enjoy being around people, no doubt because we humans provide feeding opportunities from discarded food, and nest sites in our buildings. This can make them a nuisance if they nest in chimney pots, when they drop sticks down the chimney until it's blocked. 

We once had a pair that tried to nest on the flat roof above our front door and sometimes dropped sticks on people going in and out.

They are very common birds around the little market town in County Durham where I live, where they mostly feed in the grassy areas beside footpaths and public open spaces .....

.... and often take to the air from the tree tops in communal flights, where they seem to delight in riding the wind on blustery days in late winter.

Occasionally these sociable birds can congregate in very large flocks, sometimes of a couple of hundred, when the sound of so many metallic 'chack! chack!' calls immediately turns heads skywards of those earthbound below.

Man-made cavities are often ideal nest sites for jackdaws and several pairs nest on the ruins of Egglestone Abbey in Teesdale.

The sockets that once supported roof beams of the abbey chapel are wonderfully secure jackdaw nest boxes, where they stuff them with sticks and line the nest with sheep wool from flocks that are just a field away. It's hard to imagine a more comfortable nesting site, sheltered from cold north-easterly winds in the early nesting season and with a high vantage point for an unbroken view of the surrounding countryside. 

Jackdaws are a species that mate for life, so once they have paired up they are ready to begin a new breeding season with minimal courtship, apart from some wing and tail-feather trembling on the part of the female. This pair had already occupied their nest site by mid-January.

Who's Watching Who?

When I stepped outside the front door yesterday morning a stick whizzed past my ear and clattered at my feet. Then I glanced up and one of these - that must have been perched on the gutter above the front door - flew off. Coincidence? I don't think so. I'm guessing it was startled when I hurried out the door, late for work, and dropped the stick. I hope that's the explanation, anyway.

There's something slightly unnerving about a jackdaw's stare. When you're watching them, there's always the feeling that they are watching you. Maybe it's those piercing pale blue eyes with the dark pupil. 

They're wary birds, hard to get close too when they're adults but easy to tame as nestlings. When I was a kid my cousin's friend had one that used to perch on his shoulder and would steal shiny objects that were laying around.

Jackdaws seem perfectly at home on the edge of towns, lurking round rubbish bins, gathering on patches of mown grass, hopping into the road to pick up morsels in between the passing traffic and - if they can find an unguarded chimney pot - blocking your chimney with a nest. Before we humans constructed buildings for them to nest in they nested on cliffs (I was once told that Dawdon, on the coast near Seaham in Durham and graced with some fine cliffs, was originally Daw's Den although I can't find any evidence that this is true. Plausible, though).

Jackdaws have a liking for nesting in church towers and the Rev. F.O.Morris in his History of British Birds (1891 edn) - always a source of entertaining and sometimes unreliable anecdotes - mentions that the bell tower of the Church of Tanesborough in Armagh once became so crammed with sticks of jackdaw nests that the bell could no longer be rung. He lists other instances of spiral staircases in church towers becoming blocked with mountains of jackdaw nests and also mentions that "the immense mass heaped together in the western towers of York Minster, formed a most unfortunate kind of firewood for the last tremendous conflagration that occurred there" - which I think must have been the 1840 fire in that somewhat flammable cathedral.