Summer in Brittany is for the birds

We have a family of jackdaws living in our kitchen chimney. When my wife, who works in the kitchen, is busy with her online students, she is frequently distracted by the noise of the chicks as one or other of their parents arrives back with whatever it is jackdaws eat. It is a cheerful racket, but the locals tell us that if we plan to light a fire this winter we have a problem on our hands and may have to issue an eviction notice with effect from the middle of June.

As it happens, we’re not too worried. We’re having the relevant chimney breast removed this year (if we can find someone to do it) in order to make room for more cupboards and counters, as well as a new sink. But further up, the remnants of the flue will, we are assured, gradually fill up with a pungent mix of rotting twigs and birdshit. So I’m afraid they’ll have to go.

Not yet, though. For now, they are excellent entertainment. The parents come and go with commendable resolve. The search for food is non-stop, at least during the day, though how much real effort is expended and how much is down to theft (the Jackdaw’s apparent stock-in-trade) is not something I can comment on with any reasonable authority.

Upon their return to the nest, they sit on top of the chimney pot for a few seconds, look around, then dive in, beak-first. Oddly, I have yet to see either bird emerge back into the light. I presume they have to scrabble up the flue, using their beaks for added purchase. They obviously can’t spread their wings until they’re out and it must be exhausting. Fortunately, they are jet-black to begin with, so there’s no problem with the soot.

But how do the chicks manage? Will the parents push them up, one by one? And what happens when they make it to the rim of the pot? Do they just launch themselves off and effortlessly take to the air, or do the adults have to kick them up the backside? All a bit mystifying, but I’m sure it will work out.

I’d like to leave the parents a note alerting them to the fact that their home is being redeveloped and that next year they will have to find alternative accomodation. But to be frank, they’d probably just ignore it.

This year has been a good year for birds. It’s an ill wind and all that. Here in central Brittany, the dawn and evening choruses have been spectacular. We even have a cuckoo. Last evening, our resident blackbird was buzzed by a magpie, but stood his ground. His mate, in a fetching shade of brown, wasn’t around at the time – she was proably delivering worms to her brood – but would undoubtedly have joined the defensive action. Birds are very aggressive. Territory is everything. But I still cling to the belief that they sing because they are happy and in good spirits.

Breton pigeons – wood pigeons – are quite common. They are clumsy and ungainly. They barrel into trees with no obvious sense of where they are going, using their bulk to halt their progress. They don’t sing, of course. But they call to each other in somewhat melancholy fashion. Different areas produce different calls. Ours emit three long Hoo-hoo, hooha-hoo’s, followed by a quick hoo. But in the next village, apparently, it’s four.

Hawks are a very different kettle of fish. They spiral around, letting the thermals do most of the work, endlessly searching out small creatures to devour. It’s hard not to admire them. They’re so well designed, and its exciting when they suddenly break, focus and dive. I wonder what happens when they get old and develop cataracts. Apparently, falcons and the like can live as long as 20 years, which means its possible some of the birds we see wheeling about far above our house have been here a lot longer than we have.

Every now and again in the summer, a bird will fly full-tilt at our French windows and knock itself out. I presume this is because they’re not altogether au fait with the concept of reflective glass. I’m reminded of a Cardinal bird in our former home in Connecticut that use to repeatedly head-butt itself in my office window. Two or three times here in the Côtes d’Armor, there have been  fatalities, which is always sad. That’s when I get the trowel out and dig them a small grave.

My mother, who was from North Antrim, loved birds, especially the little ones and, most particularly, robins. She’d have loved the humming birds that used to hover a curling beak’s length from the flowers in our front porch in America. But she couldn’t help noticing that all the birds of her acquaintance seemed full of beans (perhaps literally so). How long do they live? she wanted to know. Don’t they get arthritis like us? And why, unless they’re squabbling, do they always seem to be in a good mood?

Or, as she put it to my sister once, why is it you never see any dead robins flying around?