Rooks

There's a nice rookery in the village and we often get a visit from one or two looking for food in the garden. The one above is an adult, told by the pale beak (the Carrion Crow has an all dark, shorter thicker beak). They already seem to be getting active around their nest sites and it won't be long before they start to do the repair jobs to their nests that the autumn and winter winds have made necessary. They have an amazing vocabulary and I'm often entranced by the noises they produce, they go from bass to soprano with various strange quavering calls. They really are heralds for spring.