Pugnacious corvids

Thursday 20th September 2012

Today was a corvid day. That's not an adjective I've just made up, but the collective term for members of the crow family. It started with 3 Magpies mobbing a Barn Owl over Don's newly cut hay field at first doors.

Then a couple of Jackdaws were picking their way through the pig pen. Apart from briefly alighting in the old ash trees a couple of times, I think this is the first time that Jackdaws have actually dropped in on the farm, rather than just passing overhead calling loudly.

Later a Sparrowhawk was mobbed by Swallows, which were feeding low over the fields on their way South. No sooner had the Swallows moved on than the poor Sparrowhawk was well and truly set upon by three of the local Carrion Crow population.

Even a Common Buzzard came in for a bit of grief. Two young birds, in pristine plumage, have been taking advantage of the wheat harvesting in one of the back fields, hovering laboriously above the throng of gulls, presumably waiting to pick off any rodent fleeing the deafening noise and whirring blades of the giant combine harvester.

Finally, later in the evening, the kestrel which often hunts our land late in the day, came under attack.