Crows. Wherever you
go in the world (except Antarctica!) you are almost certain to see a member of
the crow family. They are mostly large,
raucous and black, though that last adjective couldn’t be applied to the jay,
one of the more colourful of our native corvids. (Corvid is the posh name ornithologists use
instead of ‘member of the crow family’.) On a recent trip to Aberdaron in North Wales,
I was privileged to see two of the least common members of the crow family –
the raven and the chough. The chough is
our rarest crow and there are only about 250 to 350 breeding pairs in the
UK. They are confined to the far west of
the country and nest on the west coasts of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. In 2002, a small population re-established
itself in Cornwall, a former chough stronghold.
Of course, farmers were to blame for their decline and eventual
extinction in Cornwall, but in this case not for destroying habitat but for
leaving it alone. Choughs feed mainly on
invertebrates, especially ants, and nest on cliffs, and the Cornish farmers
stopped allowing their stock to graze around the cliffs where they were
difficult to manage and moved them inland.
This allowed scrub to grow up and stopped the choughs getting at the food
they were used to. The RSPB has done a
lot of work in Cornwall to restore grazing there and choughs have successfully
bred there ever since.
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| Carrion Crow - Corvus corone corone |
The other member of the crow family that I saw in Wales was
the raven. There were three of them enjoying
a stiff easterly breeze around a rocky outcrop that I suspect was their nesting
site. It turns out that had I known
about it, I wouldn’t have had to travel to Wales to see them because there have
been a pair nesting on the East Hill in Hastings this year. If you are down that way, it is worth looking
out for them. They are bigger than a
carrion crow and just as black, so you’ll need to look for the very thick beak
and the diamond-shaped tail. The tail
comes to a point in the middle, unlike the crow which has a flat or slightly
rounded tail.
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| Rook - Corvus frugilegus (with a slightly malformed beak) |
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| Jackdaw - Corvus monedula |
There is no shortage of members of the crow family around
Pett village. There is at least one
noisy rookery (the rook is slightly smaller than a crow with a whitish grey
base to its beak), and plenty of jackdaws.
I admit to having a soft spot for jackdaws. They are a slightly comic bird with their
upright stance, swaggering walk and those striking white eyes. I guess I can identify with the grey head as
well.
The more colourful members of the crow family, the magpie
and the jay are regularly seen in the village.
Jays are as common as magpies but less often seen as they stay hidden in
trees and bushes most of the time. Late
autumn is a good time to see them as they come out to collect acorns which they
stash away to eat when the weather gets cold and food gets scarce.
You can’t avoid seeing magpies with their flamboyant
metallic blue wings and their boisterous habits. I was recently told of a magpie with a
deformed leg which despite that handicap was getting about and apparently
feeding well. Magpies, along with all
other members of the crow family are intelligent and resourceful birds so it
stands a good chance of survival.
