A flock of jackdaws increases in our garden ever year, there must be over twenty now. I find them to be highly intelligent and very vocal birds. Their cries though, can be quite eerie at times, a bit Stephen Kingish!
They disappear most of the day and then return out of nowhere shrieking and cawing as they settle in the enormous beech trees in the woodland garden. The woodpigeons and collared doves are instantly driven off, along with the magpies, trush and blackbirds.
I also find them an unforgiving and rather ungrateful species. I say that as they have been waging war on my other half for a few years now. The battle began over the chimney. One morning John came down to find that a jackdaw chick had fallen down the chimney, and after chasing the shrieking aggressive bird around the lounge for a while, managed to catch it and release it into the garden where it was immediately reunited with it's very ungrateful parents. They took the view that John had someow interfered with their offspring and subseqentually dive bombed him, forcing him to take cover under an old apple tree.
To make matters worse, that autumn, when the chicks had flown the nest, we had the chimney swept.
We had suffered years of fumes from the chimney due to their nests, not to mention the endless squaking which echoed horribly down the chimney for months on end.
Anyway, once the chimney was swept, John decided cover it with a cowl, to stop them nesting there once and for all.
Another huge mistake.
As he climbed the ladder, the entire family dive bombed him shrieking horribly. They nearly succeeding in killing him. Despite this, the cowl finally went up. Ever since, the entire flock dive bomb John whenever they see him. One day he foolishly retaliated and threw apples at them. Utterly futile, now the just have another grudge against him.
They also refuse to give up on nesting in the chimney. They attack the cowl every spring, it's only a matter of time before they bring it down.
I rescued one of their chicks from the jaws of a cat this year, only to recieve the same ungrateful treatment... dive bombing. The chick survived, most birds tend to die of shock.....not the hardy jackdaws!
Talking of cats, we have a jack russell/terrier cross who is just as deadly to birds as a cat is. He arrived five years ago, a casualty of a Christmas eviction. Anyway he'd been on the steets for weeks and I found him after he'd been hit by a car. He made a good recovery and we located his owners as he was micro-chipped. They didn't want him back and as we could'nt get him in a shelter due to it being Christmas, he ended up staying. We had two dogs at the time, and after a few initial scraps, they all settled down.
What shocked me was how many birds he killed. Topsy, my alsation cross, and Curdy my waggy mixture of all things funny, never killed birds, even if they walked past their noses.
Cassy though, was a killing machine. He took about 30 birds that first year, mostly chicks, not to mention countless mice. It got so bad we had to take him out in the garden on his lead. He has got better, maybe because he's slowing down as he gets older, or we're getting wiser and keep him away from the contless chicks we get every spring and summer.
A quick note......I may have a solution for keeping the cabbage white of my cabbage. Today I noticed that hundreds of cabbage white caterpillers are munching their way throgh my nasturtions......maybe I should plant them in the veggie patch and hope for the best.....by the way, I tasted my first nasturtion flower and leaf yesterday. I 'd heard you could eat them, they tasted gorgeous. Peppery!
