In the Dark

In this recent spell of rather cold weather I’ve been especially careful to keep the garden birds well nourished by deploying various feeders around the place. My fat balls are proving particular popular with the birds, but I won’t dwell on that here.

A few weeks ago a solitary rook started visiting my garden. I felt a bit sorry for this bird as it seemed to be on its own and was too big and clumsy to feed off the seed and peanut dispensers. Rooks always look a big glum to me. Eventually this figured one out how to dislodge one of the feeders from its usual place so it crashed to the floor and spilled seed all over the lawn, some of which it ate.

There then followed a sort of arms race. First I attached the feeder more securely to its existing site. The rook again managed after some time to knock it down. Then I moved it somewhere else, only for it to appear on the ground once more. Then I found a place where I could hang it between two branches of a tree in such a way it would be impossible to dislodge. This clearly frustrated the rook and again I felt sorry for it, but only for a short time.

A few days later I looked out in the garden and saw not just one rook but a whole crowd of them five or six in number, no doubt the local gang had been pressed into service. They proceeded to jump up and down on the branches of the tree until both snapped off completely, again dislodging the feeder.

I know I should admire the quality of the teamwork – a characteristic of the Corvid family – but at this rate the trees in my garden are going to be reduced to stumps. I’m not sure what I can do next.

There’s no doubt that rooks are hooligans, but at least they’re not taking all the food. I have two other dispensers that are positioned in such a way that only the little critters can get at them. So far. I’ve had all kinds of tits and finches as well as sparrows and starlings and pigeons as well as the rooks’ slightly less troublesome cousins, jackdaws and magpies.

This entry was posted on February 15, 2022 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Biographical, Maynooth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.