Clever Corvids......’There She Goes’…..
by Bernie Bell - 08:02 on 01 June 2025
Clever Corvids......
A film on Orkney Wildlife FB page of Hoodie’s being clever, prompted me to put together my Corvid tales & pics….
Here’s my Hoodie story….
https://theorkneynews.scot/2022/05/12/crows-is-hard/
And….a flock of Rooks regularly flies over our garden – we think they’re from the Rookery at Woodwick House.
There’s one who is often on his own. We call him Roookie – pronounced the Yorkshire way – and he’s a very clever bird. His beak is too big for him to peck bits from the feeder but he worked out that when the feeder was freshly filled to the brim he could either land on the cross bar, push the lid up and pick whole nuts from the top, or, when the level had gone down a bit he'd perch on the cross bar, shove the lid up, clamp himself onto the mesh of the feeder, and stick his head down into it to get nuts. When it got to a certain level he could no longer do this, and we wouldn't see him again until it was filled again. What I don’t understand is – why the other Rooks didn’t copy him?
https://theorkneynews.scot/2021/11/04/studies-of-a-rook/
Roookie’s depredations on the lid of the feeder meant that eventually it split - so we got a new feeder from the RSPB – very solid with a metal lid. Roookie turned up one morning. Sat on the cross-bar – looked at the feeder – looked at the lid. Then settled down to preen himself. I suppose he was philosophical about not being able to get at the nuts, and it is a good place to stand and look about him for other possibilities.
Smart bird. No use crying over in-accessible nuts!
We put nuts & grain on the bird table for him instead - he soon learnt to be first there in the morning!
Sometimes, when he’d had his fill at the bird table, he’d repeatedly pick up nuts in his beak, fly onto the cut grass of the meadow, and appeared to be pecking or poking at the grass. We realised that he was ‘stashing‘ peanuts! We’ve seen Jays doing this when we lived in Suffolk, but neither of us knew that Rooks do it too.
At this time of year, when we don’t put out whole peanuts, he had trouble picking up the grain with his big beak, so he’d turn his head sideways and use his beak to scoop it up! Clever bird.
He’s disappeared now – as he does at this time each year – presumably helping with child care!...
http://www.spanglefish.com/berniesblog/blog.asp?blogid=17214
Black Raven – Blue Sky…..
http://www.spanglefish.com/berniesblog/blog.asp?blogid=16749
And……
http://www.spanglefish.com/berniesblog/blog.asp?blogid=17143
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Third draft away!
Well well. Today I finished the main text of The Breaking Wave. It’s about music, pop music, and death, my death I guess. It has two Big Star jokes, enough to be going on with. It’s off to my editor, the excellent writer Richard Beard, after I’ve read it through a few more times.
First things first. I don’t do genre. I once did a road trip in the states with the Radio Four producer Peter Everett to make a show about barbed wire. For much of the trip we talked about the problems of musical genre, and we attempted a crude taxonomy of popular music. Broadly put, the problem is this - if we say ‘classical music’, we can be understood to mean something. People who know about classical music know that, strictly speaking, classical music covers a period between, let’s say, 1790-1840. But it also covers a multitude of sins, so that in real terms, it contains Bach and Ligetti, Mozart and Steve Reich, and people understand that. The same with jazz and folk. But pop music? What’s that? Do you mean The Beatles? Motown? Prince? Wham? The Stones? Throbbing Gristle? Taylor Swift? Showaddywaddy? Einsturzende Neubauten? Slade? Yes? The Velvet Underground? Little Anthony and the Imperials? Everytime I use the term ‘pop music’ someone gets on their high horse, and relates it to sales. Bollocks to that. The best Peter Everett and I came up with was ‘Post Steven Foster Non-Art Music,’ and I can say that if you prefer. But, why not just go with ‘pop’ for now?
Here, in fact, is a pop song I wrote with my long-term writing partner Peter French 30 odd years ago. I might post more of these, because the songs The Breaking Wave play are versions of the songs we wrote and performed together. This is how come I can quote the lyrics, because I wrote them for actual real songs.
Then, death. I sure feel like it sometimes. The palliative care nurse thinks it’s a way off yet. So why, then, do I have a fucking palliative care nurse? You tell me.
The book itself should be published in hardback sometime this autumn. It is my firm intention to be at the launch party, hopefully not in a box. I was for many delightful years in a comedy music duo called Your Dad with my dear friend Chas Ambler. When he died, we held a celebration of his life high in the Tatham Fells. For the duration of the event, Chas’ coffin was on stage. I introduced the event by saying, ‘Well, Chas died on stage many times. But this is the first time he’s been actually dead, and on stage.’
It’s the way I tell ‘em.”
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IAN MARCHANT
MAY 29
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My response was….
“You’re right – the label ‘Pop’ causes more kerfuffle than other music labels. My feathers ruffle when people refer to Prince as ‘Pop’, then I tell myself – what’s in a name? It’s the effect of the music that counts.
Maybe the confusion is because, as a kind of music, it’s newer than the others and hasn’t ‘settled down’ yet?”
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