High jinks of junkie jackdaws

Last week two jackdaws were playing riders on the storm, sitting out a good part of the gales near the exposed top of a wind-lashed birch. The branch they perched on was alarmingly elastic. Each gust made it dip four or five times the birds’ body length, then spring up again, all the while pitching from side to side with stomach churning irregularity.

Other twigs and branches waved in front of them like windscreen wipers. The branches may even have raked the birds’ heads and wings, yet still the animals held fast. This was not a new experience: they had perched on the same tipsy branch through comparable gales at the beginning of March.

When the wind blows, jackdaws appear to be adrenaline junkies, delighting, like no other birds I know, in its capricious power. Many times, up on the top of the hill, I have seen whole flocks wind surfing. Generation after generation has followed the same routine. The jackdaws cast themselves out of the crowns of the tallest pines to catch the full force of the wind, spreading their wings then letting the gusts blow them back. They revel in the currents that throw them around as if they were caught inside a tumble drier.

In the high pressure calm that followed the storms the birds went back to serious work. A pair pottered about on the newly mown chapel lawn early one morning, their heads bowed as they laboured. The gales may have given them twigs for their chimney pot nests; now they were gathering the soft furnishings, stuffing their beaks with pieces  of grass. But they were leaving the green, fresh, stems and selecting only the dry and yellow.

The birds let me walk within a few feet. At close range every member of the crow family has exaggerated features so striking they make an observer gasp. Jackdaws wear swimming goggles – their brilliant white eye-rings, more brilliant the closer you get, look like these accessories. Watching the birds, I thought the silky grey mantle over the sides of their heads and shoulders, set against their black caps and bodies, was more beautiful than ever.

Derek Niemann (@DerekNiemann)