....well actually it's a clattering of Jackdaws!! Who knew?
But anyway .....
Some facts and myths here
On the 29th of last month a Jackdaw was noisily poking about a small patch of grass sandwiched between a gazillion feral doves, the bottle bank and the public loos. It suddenly made me think how few Jackdaws I'd seen locally so, back at base, I checked my notes (virtually all available notes, i.e. those not lost over the years, now computerised) and found the following.
1) Not a single record in this approximately 18-20 hectare plot since moving here in 1966!!
2) Not a single record for Hampshire nor Sussex over the same time period with the exception of 'January Big days' where every species was recorded - all of these were this century.
3) Just recorded as a 'padder' species in European trips to Spain (4), Estonia, La Brenne, Sweden, Bulgaria, Lesbos, Hungary and Greece.
Digging further showed an almost identical pattern for Rook and Crow and Magpie, although the latter two are numerous and have always been so in this 'patch'. Jay gets slightly better cover in terms of records but still on only 40 out of 5200+ entries and again biased towards 'big days' or site 'padders'. Being historically rarer Raven gets much better treatment and I would suspect every sighting would have been logged, certainly in UK terms.
I think the above proves nothing other than I'm a useless note-taker🤐
Anyway, back to Jack pictured below who is still present up to today, very noisy, very approachable and seems to think he's a pigeon. When not around the pond he's been exploring nearby roofs. Soon after it's arrival local Hants birders recorded 4500+ moving over a few days at a variety of sites with the largest group being 950, so maybe a few are going to stop off and explore new sites like this one. Interesting to see if can attract others and clutter up someone's chimney next spring!!
