wanted too to communicate, to be spoken to, to be heard.
Everywhere there were corvids and now I began to notice them, to appreciate them suddenly in another way. Driving, I’d see rooks as I had before, but with a new eye, a new acuity, the endless desultory pairs feeding, perhaps in the company of assorted crows, a few starlings, a handful of sparrows, in the grass of roadside verges, scattered as black flickers around every stand or thicket of trees, dusting,drifting, picking over the tilled surfaces of fields. They were all, as Chicken would grow in time to be, of sober mien, elegant of dress in well-tended black (except in summer when moulting renders them grey-edged and unkempt) with neat polished feet like tight, shining boots, somewhere between eighteenth-century Scottish minister (Henry Raeburn’s ‘Skating Minister’ perhaps) and wealthy, black-clad, fashionable 1930s Parisian lady of distinguished years. I watched their walk, their gestures, what seemed to pass between them, in an infinity of behaviour I still had to learn.
There was more to know than I could have imagined; there was place and history and time. We knew corvids only in their wary, distant presence, in the sound of their voices. Corvids of one sort or another are found in many places in the north, as they are in most of Britain, among other birds, the lapwings and curlews whose calls are part of the sound of Scotland, the oystercatchers, gulls, herons, eagles, buzzards, hawks. Recently, I saw a map of rook distribution, which looked like a red scarf flung across the northern world. In urban settings, crows and jackdaws seem ubiquitous, pottering a few steps away, cautiously aware of us as we walk through the park, through the town gardens, black shapes in stark branches above us, silhouetted against pale clouds and sky. They’re there on every stretch of roadway, every supermarket car park. Over farmland rooks fly, nest, feed and roost. One of the constants of many northern European cities is the presence of corvids; the crows I pass in a Warsaw park, the rooks on the spires and in the trees of Vilnius. In some cities, because of changes in farming practices and the greater availability of food in towns, theirpresence is fairly recent. Most corvid populations are settled, although rooks migrate from Russia, Sweden and the southern Baltic south to Britain and other north European countries for winter. Worldwide, too, they’re found in most places except Antarctica; in South America there are no crows, only jays and magpies. Populations differ in number and vulnerability, a few highly adapted species declining now to the point where they face extinction, the Flores, the Hawaiian and the Mariana crows among them, the latter two tree foragers, their habitats reduced by logging, as others’ are by farming, industrial development or any of the other dangers humans introduce when their interests coincide with, and ultimately overwhelm, those of native bird populations.
Of the corvids found in Britain the ravens, Corvus corax , are the largest of all, with their neck ruffs of feathers and big, strong beaks. Rooks, Corvus frugilegus , have grey faces, long slender beaks and full leg feathers, whilst carrion crows, Corvus corone , are all black, neat-feathered, with shorter beaks than rooks. Hooded crows, Corvus corone cornix , look like crows wearing shaggy grey body-warmers. The jackdaws, Corvus monedula , have unmistakable silver eyes, short, pointed beaks and flattened panels of feathers at the sides of their heads. The other British corvids are not black: the magpie, Pica pica , is unmistakably, dazzlingly black and white; the chough, Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax , the rarest of the corvids, is red-legged and red-beaked. Jays, Garrulus gladarius , are colourful, light brown and blue and black and white.
Colonial nesters, rooks group in tight-knit, extended families, in rookeries of many nests, some containing many hundreds or thousands of birds.
Everywhere there were corvids and now I began to notice them, to appreciate them suddenly in another way. Driving, I’d see rooks as I had before, but with a new eye, a new acuity, the endless desultory pairs feeding, perhaps in the company of assorted crows, a few starlings, a handful of sparrows, in the grass of roadside verges, scattered as black flickers around every stand or thicket of trees, dusting,drifting, picking over the tilled surfaces of fields. They were all, as Chicken would grow in time to be, of sober mien, elegant of dress in well-tended black (except in summer when moulting renders them grey-edged and unkempt) with neat polished feet like tight, shining boots, somewhere between eighteenth-century Scottish minister (Henry Raeburn’s ‘Skating Minister’ perhaps) and wealthy, black-clad, fashionable 1930s Parisian lady of distinguished years. I watched their walk, their gestures, what seemed to pass between them, in an infinity of behaviour I still had to learn.
There was more to know than I could have imagined; there was place and history and time. We knew corvids only in their wary, distant presence, in the sound of their voices. Corvids of one sort or another are found in many places in the north, as they are in most of Britain, among other birds, the lapwings and curlews whose calls are part of the sound of Scotland, the oystercatchers, gulls, herons, eagles, buzzards, hawks. Recently, I saw a map of rook distribution, which looked like a red scarf flung across the northern world. In urban settings, crows and jackdaws seem ubiquitous, pottering a few steps away, cautiously aware of us as we walk through the park, through the town gardens, black shapes in stark branches above us, silhouetted against pale clouds and sky. They’re there on every stretch of roadway, every supermarket car park. Over farmland rooks fly, nest, feed and roost. One of the constants of many northern European cities is the presence of corvids; the crows I pass in a Warsaw park, the rooks on the spires and in the trees of Vilnius. In some cities, because of changes in farming practices and the greater availability of food in towns, theirpresence is fairly recent. Most corvid populations are settled, although rooks migrate from Russia, Sweden and the southern Baltic south to Britain and other north European countries for winter. Worldwide, too, they’re found in most places except Antarctica; in South America there are no crows, only jays and magpies. Populations differ in number and vulnerability, a few highly adapted species declining now to the point where they face extinction, the Flores, the Hawaiian and the Mariana crows among them, the latter two tree foragers, their habitats reduced by logging, as others’ are by farming, industrial development or any of the other dangers humans introduce when their interests coincide with, and ultimately overwhelm, those of native bird populations.
Of the corvids found in Britain the ravens, Corvus corax , are the largest of all, with their neck ruffs of feathers and big, strong beaks. Rooks, Corvus frugilegus , have grey faces, long slender beaks and full leg feathers, whilst carrion crows, Corvus corone , are all black, neat-feathered, with shorter beaks than rooks. Hooded crows, Corvus corone cornix , look like crows wearing shaggy grey body-warmers. The jackdaws, Corvus monedula , have unmistakable silver eyes, short, pointed beaks and flattened panels of feathers at the sides of their heads. The other British corvids are not black: the magpie, Pica pica , is unmistakably, dazzlingly black and white; the chough, Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax , the rarest of the corvids, is red-legged and red-beaked. Jays, Garrulus gladarius , are colourful, light brown and blue and black and white.
Colonial nesters, rooks group in tight-knit, extended families, in rookeries of many nests, some containing many hundreds or thousands of birds.
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