Monday, October 05, 2009
USUALLY when I work at the computer I close the curtains on the big window beside me so that I can see the monitor more clearly.
But this was a dull day so I was able to let in some natural light. I switched on the machine, glanced out of the window and was instantly distracted.
The field was full of birds.
There were around 60 rooks, all within a couple of hundred metres of me, and, as I looked more closely, i spotted a dozen or so jackdaws with them. A few wood pigeons were scattered around the perimeter.
One of these was right under the window and I noticed it was a bird that had hatched this year – it lacked the white neck ring that gives the species its alternative name of ‘ring dove’.
The field is a ten-acre meadow and it had only been mowed a couple of weeks ago to produce a late crop of haylage. This late harvest had resulted in two things.
First the grasses in the meadow were full of ripe seed when they were cut and the machinery had winnowed this out so the sward was covered in potential bird seed.
Secondly the short stubble gave access to many beetles, grubs, worms and slugs in the surface layer – a meat course for them.
Wood pigeons are pretty strict vegetarians, so they were concentrating on the grass seeds, along with the occasional clover leaf that was too low to the ground to be cut by the mowing bar.
As every cattle farmer knows, clover is very nutritious, and pigeons know this too – it’s one of their favourite foods.
The rooks, on the other hand, were interested in a diet with a high protein content.
They were using their powerful beaks like pick-axes and digging down into the grass roots for leather jackets and worms. Leather jackets are those large, juicy-looking grubs with a tough skin that you sometimes dig up in the garden – they are the larvae of the crane fly, which is more commonly called a ‘daddy-long-legs’.
Rooks are members of the crow family that have specialised in digging.
The reason they have a bald, grey patch at the base of their beaks is because they are a bird that likes to stay clean and doesn’t have the time to spend preening soil out of the feathers on its face.
After a while I noticed that all, or almost all, the rooks in the flock were in pairs. Every now and again one of them would unearth a particularly delicious morsel.
It would call and the other member of the pair would hop over rapidly and swallow the treasured item.
They would then face each other, about 50 centimetres apart, lift their heads and their tails, and shout a couple of times.
Rooks mate for life and this is obviously a piece of behaviour that reinforces the pair bond. But giving away food, except during courtship or when feeding young, is unusual among birds and animals.
The jackdaws were concentrating on surface food in the grass, chasing flies, harvestmen and adult daddy-long-legs and paying particular attention to the wisps of damp hay left behind by the baler.
They were also in pairs, though they weren’t offering food to their mates.
I turned to the computer for a couple of minutes and when I looked up again the field was empty.
I don’t know what triggered the exodus but I suspect it was simply that their crops were full and they headed off to look for some grit to help them ‘chew’ all that nutritious but rather tough food.
* dick.warner@examiner.ie
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