Monday 25 May 2009

Not long for this world

I don't know if it's just this pair or whether all jackdaws are stupid. But I suspect it is just the parents of this young bird.
Every year they build a nest in the metal rafters of the modern barn, thirty feet up. Every year the nest is either attacked by buzzards or falls from its precarious perch and the nestlings die.
This morning I find one dead bird lying on the dirt, but this one has come down with the nest and sits in the cup of straw, just as it did thirty feet up. It won't last long, and I'm not saving it...there are far too many jackdaws around as it is, mobbing my duck eggs, goslings and ducklings.
But the parents will build a fresh nest in exactly the same place, and hatch more eggs, with the same consequences.

5 comments:

Yorkshire Pudding said...

How odd...but then again Americans build timber homes in Tornado Alley and Bangladeshis build theirs in a flood-prone delta... Perhaps we're not so different from the jackdaw.

James Higham said...

Are jackdaws stupid?

Mopsa said...

YP - I hadn't made the connection - you are so right.

James - I don't know about the average jackdaw, and think it's unlikely, but this pair are, definitely. CBT might be the answer.

Whispering Walls said...

I hope you don't find it as you found the rat

Mopsa said...

WW - that's a thought - I'll be sure to take a photo if so!