By Bernie Bell

I saw this on Fiona (G)’s Twitter

…and thought of all the nest-building activity we’re watching at the moment.  Then I remembered a tale about the local Hoodies – crows, that is.

Just down the road from us, one of the telegraph poles has a Transformer box on top of it.  When we first moved here our neighbours told us that a pair of Hoodies used to build their nest on top of the Transformer box. The problem was, they used bits of barbed wire, picked up from the nearby fields. This would then cause a ‘short’ in the transmission and the ’lecci would go off! 

This happened every year at nesting time.  Eventually, the Hydro people came out and rigged up something on the Transformer box to stop crows building their nests there. 

And I thought – how hard can you get?  Orkney crows build their nests out of barbed wire!

There are still a pair of Hoodies in the area. If I’m late putting out the bird food in our garden they land on the fence posts and caw at me!  How do they know the time?  Probably how we used to know the time, before we lost our senses – by the look and feel of what’s happening around them.

I don’t know where they nest now but each year they have a brood of either one or two chicks and so each year, for a time, we have three or four Hoodies in the garden instead of two.  Then, once the young ones can fend for themselves they get kicked out.  Not a bad idea.

Mrs. Blackbird has a fit every time we go near the Woolly Willow – so – we don’t.

And we see Starlings struggling with bits of material which are far too big for them – that’s Starling attitude for ya’.