Jackdaws and others (including Crow)

There's quite a crowd of jackdaws round our way just now, and they've taken to coming into our garden and attacking the fat feeder, which dispenses dollops about the size of a wine-bottle cork and is very popular with the woodpeckers and the house sparrows. The jackdaws keep all of them away and are rather messy and untidy in the way they attack the feeder. One at a time is all right, but when there's three or four together as there were today it's a bit tiresome.

Crow doesn't like them, either, and they will attack him if he shows his face. So he skulks in his tree and hopes they don't notice him. Jackdaws are colonial nesters, but they don't really co-operate with one another, and will steal nest sites from each other, sometimes evicting eggs or nestlings to do so. I think ours are nesting in the wood behind, though I have noticed them prospecting our neighbour's chimneys. At Minsterley our chimneys had to wired to prevent jackdaw access. A friend had a scare when a fully grown jackdaw chick came down the chimney in a cloud of soot and proceeded to rampage in terror around his lounge.

Blackbirds will also have a go at this feeder, by the way. As with the jackdaws, there is much fluttering of wings: it's not a very gainly pursuit. But it's an easy and cheap meal.

Here's a picture of Crow.  He took to visiting our patio every day for a while, but now mostly he stays in his tree.