Bird Stories

Yesterday Presteigne was a town full of rooks. I nearly wrote 'a townful' to try and indicate the fact that the birds seemed to be everywhere. There are many tall bare trees and the birds seemed to be flowing through them and over the rooftops, to perch on TV aerials and chimney pots. The air was full of their cries, competing with the church bells. The whole valley is a great place for rook-watching - crow-watching generally - and my interest was sparked by seeing them in the fields and on the roadside fences. There is a large field called Broadheath Common on the very border of Powys and Herefordshire which in August and September was often full of feeding crows, although I didn't stop the car to check which birds they were; only if they flew over the road could I identify them. Certainly there are ravens on the hill behind the house, and this morning we had a carrion crow in the garden. I assume it was checking the hedges for the nests of sparrows. A big bird to see close up, crow-black, bible-black, huge bill.

Yesterday we also had two partridge walking up the lane to the main road, and we saw them later in the afternoon in the paddock behind the house. They always look baffled and self-conscious. There are plenty of pheasants about still and we often see them foraging in the roadsides; they have visited the garden a few times as well. Their clacketty, wooden call is part of the soundscape of the valley.

Even with putting food out the numbers of birds visiting the land around the house has dropped in the last two months. We have stopped putting nuts out and so the great spotted woodpeckers and nuthatches have stopped coming, as have the greenfinches and siskins. We still get dunnocks and house sparrows as well as chaffinches, blue and great tits, long tailed tits and occasional marsh/willow tits. There are many buzzards on the hill, and last summer Michael suspected a goshawk up in the trees there as well.