Crows for Rick

The last two days haven't really been the weather for long walks with a camera. On the KOS forum there's been a debate about the lack of photographs of Crows on the KOS gallery. I think Rick Lawes who first mentioned it really meant the black ones, Crows, Rooks and Jackdaws, but I started thinking that crows as a family have quite a place in literature and art. I haven't time to go into it very deeply at the moment. This wet and bedraggled Magpie was out side the NT centre at the White Cliffs car park today.

Here's a little poem by Stella M. Turk MBE

The Thieving Magpie

I am under the eye

Of a master spy

-a thieving magpie

He watches me

From a nearby tree

And if i’m not in view

He is quick to attack

A flight there and back

And he has the cheese

Put out to please

The smaller birds

Which quickly take flight

When he comes into sight

The best known poem concerning Rooks is "Black Rook in Rainy Weather" by Silvia Plath. It's a bit deep for me, I get lost after the first verse!

This Rook was sitting on a TV aerial in Whitfield when I was on was way to get petrol. It doesn't quite fit the little verse, also by Stella Turk, but in the rain it was the best I could do:

The Restless Rooks

This winter the local rooks are very vocal

I don’t know whether they are glad or sad

But they seem in the main to complain.

They don’t want to be bound to the ground

Nor do they want to be in a tree

Or for long to fly in the sky.

Are they just jesting, or thinking of nesting?

Is it due to the mildness, or wildness?

If anyone knows, they are not telling me.

I'm a Starling Me Darling - Pam Ayres

We're starlings, the misses, meself and the boys,
We don't go round hopin', we walks.
We don't go in for this singing all day,
And twittering about, we just squawks.


We don't go in for these fashionable clothes,
Like old Missel Thrush, and his spots,
Me breast isn't red, there's no crest on me head,
We've got sort of, hardwearing...dots.


We starlings, the misses, meself and the boys,
We'll eat anything that's about,
Well anything but that old half coconut,
I can't hold it still. I falls out.


What we'd rather do, is wait here for you,
To put out some bread for the tits,
And then when we're certain, you're there by the curtain,
We flocks down and tears it to bits.


But we starlings, the misses, meself and the boys,
We reckon that we're being got at,
You think for two minutes, them finches and linnets,
You never sees THEM being shot at.


So the next time you comes out to sprinkle the crumbs out,
And there's starlings there, making a noise,
Don't you be so quick to heave half a brick,
It's the misses, meself and the boys!

Poem by Pam Ayres


She may not be Keats or Wordsworth, but I think she gets the essence of the Starling to perfection.

Garden Birds Lots of Starlings are visiting, up to 40 at a time and a big increase in the number of Blackbirds around seems to have coincided with the cold weather. Greenfinches, Chaffinches and Collared Doves are enjoying the sunflower seeds I'm putting out and both Carrion Crows and Rooks are regular visitors.