A walk on the wildside

My thanks to Ossian who read our story of the magpies wedding in a recent Walk on the Wildside, and who was kind enough to tell me his own story about a magpie.

Ossian rescued a fledgling magpie which had fallen from its nest and which was under threat from a marauding cat. He managed to rear the little bird on bread soaked in milk and kept it in his room where it liked to perch on his shoulder while he studied. He told me that he had to wear a special jumper, as having a magpie on your shoulder can have predictable consequences. The bird was almost a year old when it died, so Ossian did very well to rear a wild bird to that stage.

Thanks also to JL from Kilworth who phoned me to tell me that he had observed a group of crows in a stand of trees near the village who seemed to be flouting the planning laws by starting to build their nests already. He saw the crows gathering twigs and starting to repair old nests, all the crows were in pairs as if they had already chosen their partners and there was much fighting over nests and twigs. Crows usually begin to nest in early spring. I could be wrong but I think it is very likely that these birds are rooks who do have a habit of revisiting their rookeries. Rooks too do have a habit of stealing twigs from the nests of neighbouring pairs while the rightful owners are away about their lawful business. This of course can lead to squabbles such as JL witnessed.

There is a very old superstition that if rooks desert their traditional nesting place that it is a bad omen for the owners of the land that the rookery is on. In the Orkney Islands it is believed that famine would follow such an event. The old expression “as the crow flies” alludes to rooks which typically fly in straight lines, unlike their cousins jays and magpies which have a very undulating flight.

As children we used to see great flocks of crows passing over the fields of the Old Sandpit late in the evenings on their way to roost in the woods of Castlehyde. There would always be a few stragglers at the end of the flock. For some reason - I don’t know why - we would shout after the stragglers “we’ll tell the master, the very last crow”. In a nature book by Stefan Buczacki which I was reading recently there is a reference to a boyhood friend of his in Derbyshire, who on seeing the rooks flying back to their nests would say “the rooks are going home from school”.

There is a rookery near Turrif Castle in Scotland which is believed to be the largest in the world, at one time over 10,000 rooks would roost there. Rooks are sometimes used in imagery to represent a minister or a parson, as in the old familiar rhyme Who Killed Cock robin? Which runs ‘Who’ll be the parson? I, said the rook, With my little book, I’ll be the parson”.

Well, I hope to be hearing more about the Kilworth crows in the weeks ahead, and again my thanks to JL and to Ossian for sharing their stories with me.

Having a short afternoon stroll on Barnane Walk recently, I was intrigued to see a little birdlike creature flitting along the surface of the water. It looked like a swallow. Even though it was still quite bright, what I saw was a bat and it kept flying up and down the same area. It seemed to be feeding on something on the surface of the water. I am no expert on these flying mammals, but I think what I saw was a Daubertons bat, on consulting with one of my books I found that this particular species is found close to calm water near woods, and this certainly fits in with where I saw this little creature. Daubertons bats forage over the water in search of little aquatic insects, the reason that they prefer calm water is that ripples on the water surface interfere with the returning echo of their call. In captivity they have been seen to catch small fish with their feet if the fish penetrates a smooth water surface.

There is never a walk in our woods or along the banks of our rivers on which there is not something wonderful to be seen in the world of nature.