Jackdaws

This morning once again our garden is full of jackdaws - a family consisting of two parents and four children. I realise that only adds up to six birds, but they still manage to fill our garden. The parents are feeding at our garden feeding station, which involves a great deal of flapping of wings and clumsy manoeuvring, while the youngsters, who I think would still like just to be fed by mum and dad, have to look on and learn, and peck at the stuff their parents drop.

The jackdaws can't get into the squirrel-proof sunflower feeders, so have to stick to the fat-ball dispenser. As they peck chunks of fat away, they are rather messy eaters, so in fact the youngsters (and a couple of pigeons who have also looked in) are doing quite well out of the scraps. Other birds don't get a look-in. At present, we are being visited by large numbers of young blue tits and great tits, and I can see them in the nearby trees and bushes, waiting for the coast to be clear. The jackdaws aren't going to harm them, but all this mad flapping of dusky wings is too much for the small birds.

The parent jackdaws have the distinctive light grey napes, while the children are more of a plain black - or perhaps charcoal - all over. But they are big birds, and they look far too large to be what they are: children, with lots still to learn, including how to feed themselves.