Crows and Crashes

Francis was in all sorts yesterday; his Dell PC had crashed the day before, and having worked through the night, he still had no internet access. By the time I was going to bed, last night, he had the old Gateway PC reinstalled, not been able to get IE installed, and so he said he would use my laptop to download Firefox, his preferred browser, and put on CD so he could install it again on the PC.
I’d asked some time ago already if he could install FF on the laptop, as I had some problems with IE now and then.
So with FF installed on my laptop now too, my Favourites are of course all muddled up, I settled down here this morning, ready to get to work and sort the Favourite menu. Not so. It was a busy morning in the planter, my makeshift birdtable.
Last week or so, during heavy rain, my Jackdaws came here to fed their, oh so, woolly fledgling. It had not been back, or at least I had missed it. This morning as it started to rain, yup you guessed right; it returned. Not to let a wet window stand between me and my camera, I decided to take pics whatever the weather, and whilst doing so the window cleared, albeit still quite dark.
The parents appeared too, several times, and each time they did so, one would peck at Junior with their beaks, at which JR would jump up, flap wildly and settle down a few inches further on, stilling its hunger with whatever it could find, but not for long because he would soon be back at the tub of peanut cake JR’s sibling arrived with the parents also, more subdued, a rare trait in Crows of any kind, this one stayed on the shelf behind the feeder and on the wall, until the adults had made space for it to have a look amidst all that food too. It only had a few bites before getting onto the wall again with mum and Dad, no need for pecking at this one so. This Jackdaw would grow up, fitting into Jackdaw society, much more than JR, still gobbling at the food below.

Another surprise was appearing on the feeding stage; A junior Great Tit; not that young any more, as it has lost most of the yellow on the cheeks and nape, yet is lovely to watch as is meeting up with the others in the garden and as it feeds. Baby Blue Tit was shown off 2 weeks ago, and it has not been seen it since. Only waiting for the Coal Tits so.
It is one of these wishy washy days, Sun, rain, and fresh sometimes gusty wind. The light also keeps shifting, keeping me indoors. With F. still at work to get any kind of Internet I’d best stay home perhaps for moral support. FF cannot be installed because there is no later version of Windows ME at that PC. And it not being a Dell PC, it won’t accept system discs of my laptop nor the other Dell PC which had Windows XP. Grr...

Old Crow mentioned not to having heard of Hooded Crows before; viewing her profile, I can see why not; The Hooded Crow is a typically Eurasian Crow. The Corvus Cornix is resident in Ireland, Scandinavia, N and W Scotland East of Denmark. West of Denmark, it is a summer visitor to Holland, Luxembourg, NE France, Belgium and the East coast of UK. And to Brittany {France} too. Also frequents Middle East where a separate species, is found among Iraq/Syria and Turkey.
There are hybrids too, in places where the Cornix {Hooded} and Corone {Carrion} overlap. And only in 2002 was the Cornix granted separate species status by the authorities.
I’m a bit Crow mad too; where we lived before, in this village, we lived at a Rookery, and 150metres from the coast. The noise of both the Herring Gulls and the Rooks was alarming!
now we live next to a school which is a great attraction to Rooks, Jackdaws and Hoodies. In the beginning I hated them, more so for stealing the food for the little ones, but then I started to look at Crows in a different manner and now, years later, I am rather fond of them. And as the smallest of the lot, I think Jackdaws are rather cute. And they Cackle real funny among each other, a witch could learn a lot of these Corvids.

JR feeding on peanutcakeOne of my male ChaffinchesHouse Sparrow fledgling being fed by DadYoung Great TitRange of Hooded Crow in Eurpe: