Country & Coast: Harbinger of misfortune warrants admiration

Twice at the weekend I heard the chacking of jackdaws. The first location was on the Hunslet side of the River Aire, just downstream from Leeds city centre, then a few hours later they were scattering noisily away from a cliff near Ilkley.

Few species of bird frequent urban and rural areas with such ease. In the case of jackdaws they have just a single requirement from any habitat. It must contain a vertical structure pockmarked with nooks and crannies to provide safe nesting sites, and it doesn’t matter if this is an old mill or factory or a rocky outcrop high on the windswept moors above Wharfedale.

Some nests can be the most remarkable constructions. The birds keep dropping twigs and lumps of moss into a hole many feet deep until the material reaches almost to the surface. Or rather until they think the hole is about full.

Sometimes, when they choose an unguarded chimney for instance, they are apt to find that the platform of nesting material sags then collapses beneath them.

This was the prelude to my close encounter with a jackdaw a couple of years ago. I heard a sudden commotion behind the fire screen - it was a warm April evening and the grate was empty - and within seconds I had a jackdaw flapping around the sitting room.

It eventually settled on a chair back, and before I managed to capture the bird and release it back into the garden unharmed I was able to appreciate its beauty. So often, jackdaws are seen as a flock of birds silhouetted against the sky and, because they are so common, rarely looked at through binoculars. But from a couple of feet away and in good light the grey feathers behind the head shine like an elegant silver hood.

If I were superstitious, the bird’s arrival might have filled me with alarm. As with other members of the crow family, jackdaws are commonly held to presage bad luck, and in the north of England there has long been a tradition that when a jackdaw comes down your chimney it is considered to portend the death of someone in the house.

Despite such superstitions around jackdaws, people who appreciate their beauty sometimes keep them as pets. I have heard about one at a cottage next to Scalby Beck near Scarborough where anglers used to buy fishing permits. When anyone knocked on the door the jackdaw, which hung around outside, would jump up and start squawking something that everyone took to be “Door Jack, Jack door”.

They are well-known collectors of shiny objects, perhaps more so than magpies, and the pile of nesting material that came down my chimney included several aluminium ring-pulls as well as the colourful wrappings of chocolate bars, items which could only have been collected for their decorative qualities.

A few years back there was lovely a story of how one particular jackdaw was being trained by Italian thieves to snatch money from the hands of people as they withdrew money from cash machines.