Every evening this week, just as the gloaming is beginning to gather, I’ve seen a very large flock of jackdaws – maybe a hundred or more – fly across my house from west to east. Many of them settle in the trees in the back field while others fly around in circles, and then they all fly back again and disappear into the distance. I’ve never seen that in the fourteen years I’ve lived here, and I don’t know why they’ve suddenly started doing it.
And tonight there was another first – several small flocks of gulls flying north in a chevron pattern as though they think they’re migrating geese.
So what on earth is going on here? Is it something to do with climate change, or what?
There are those who believe that birds act as messengers to us humans. There are others who say that this is mere superstition arising from the fact that birds can fly, and were therefore seen – in the minds of our ignorant and superstitious ancestors – as being privy to arcane knowledge stored in the heavenly realm.
I’m naturally given to accepting the latter, as any modern human would. But I can’t know, can I? Maybe there’s more to birds than meets the eye, in which case I wish they’d be a little more transparent in their mode of communication.
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