The confessions of a failed scarecrow

YOU’VE got to be careful what you say these days, so it’s with some trepidation I tell you that on frequent occasions I might have been spied marching on a parliament with the trusty old shotgun over my shoulder in recent weeks.

But before I hear the screech of rapid response police cars outside the farmhouse, I’d like to make it plain that I haven’t been heading towardsWestminster or had my sights set on Hollyrood.

No, I’ve simply been trying to keep the rooks off the barley – and, as anyone who remembers the collective noun for rooks from their schooldays is probably aware, one of the proper names for a group of these flapping fiends gathered together is a “parliament”.

Just to keep the collective noun theme going, I’d have to tell you that during these attacks on my barley – which can see large areas of ripening crop turned into a flattened field of straw in no time – the main performers are often joined by a “clattering” of jackdaws.

Happily the ravens seem to confine their activities to the hill, as they come under the collective heading of an “unkindness”.

Fans ofTaggart, however, might be interested to know that when crows congregate together it’s known as a “murder” (or should that be murrrderrr) – another well-deserved term.

However distracting these imaginative terms might be, they don’t lessen the damage these birds can do to a field of grain.

Now I think it would be fair to say there aren’t many farmers who grudge the beasties and birdies that live in their fields, hedgerows and fence-lines enough grub to keep them going.

But at this time of year the rooks have a destructive habit of coming together in huge numbers.

Trees around a field or somewhere with short grass provide a landing area for the rooks to congregate before they hop into the grain field where they dive-bomb the crop, knocking it to the ground and then eat the cereals to their hearts’ content. There’s nothing quite as depressing or infuriating as to bring a crop close to harvest and then to have the rewards plucked from your grasp at the last minute.

There really isn’t much else to do than to resort to some sort of scarecrow tactics. There’s very few of the old traditional type still made but although they can be effective for a while the rooks soon seem to realise that these men of straw offer no real threat.

Last weekend, when I was forlornly turning hay but constantly being thwarted by heavy showers whenever it got close enough to even think about taking the baler out, I found my presence was no longer novelty enough.

The rooks had become so used to me driving up and down the field that they began using the hay field as their take off point for dive- bombing operations in the adjacent barley field – even when I drove at them, yelling and waving my hat out the tractor window.

So, and I know it’s nothing to crow about, I’m probably one of the few people who can describe themselves as a failed scarecrow.