On Bird And Animal Behaviour

I’m watching the cock blackbird, who is watching the droves of gulls and rooks returning home to rest. What is he thinking? The low, fast flight of a bird over his head makes him draw in his neck. Sparrowhawk ..! No .. he relaxes, for it is a late returning woodpigeon flashing across the garden. The blackbird is watching me too, though he is familiar with my presence here on my garden deck. He's enjoying his territory and I’m enjoying mine. He can’t possibly know that I strive to protect him and his like. He will only ever know me as a threat .. for I am human. I enjoy his presence and he tolerates my intrusion. His country cousins would not allow such close proximity. They would spot me and go rocketing through the wood with a “chee, chee, chee, chee, chee”. A continuous racket which they reserve for the presence of man. They will act entirely differently if a fox, cat or stoat is threatening their domain. Their alarm call will be much more subtle. They will circumnavigate the threat, issuing a familiar, monotone "pip-pip-pip". This is a trend that gamekeepers of old used to their benefit, the first call to know when there was a poacher in the wood and the second to know that a predator was around which might threaten the poults. That tendency to fuss around a ground based, animal threat allowing the keeper to track the culprit and stop it in it’s tracks.

The jay is one of nature's most observant sentries. Yet, she will behave in a fashion almost opposite to the blackbird. She will hover, darting under cover from bough to bough around human presence, though she will remain distant. If there is a natural threat (fox, cat, mustelid, grey squirrel) she will be much closer to them (still circling, still screaming). Catch a jay in the open though and they will arrow off, screeching, to announce your presence to every creature within two hundred yards. Worse still, your quarry will heed this warning. Whilst the browsing rabbit will usually ignore the clatter of a wood pigeon (perhaps because they do it all the time) they will flatten to the ground or bolt to cover when the jay sounds her alarm. Another canny watchman is the carrion crow. Over the years, I have tried to interpret the various calls of the crow and have mostly failed miserably. I am still convinced, though, that the treble-syllable call they emit when I’m spotted with a rifle (a “graw,graw,graw”) really does mean “gun, gun, gun!”.

I am in no doubt that many wild creatures can detect malice. We humans certainly don’t have the patent on interpretation of body-language and I have been able to check this theory many times. The grey squirrel will sit on it’s bough watching you for an eternity until you raise your scope in it’s direction. Then it will flee. Recently, I stepped from cover to see a hare staring back at me. My rifle was slung over my shoulder. I backed into cover and drew the camera from my bag. I stepped out and this normally wary beast allowed me to photograph it at leisure. I stepped back into cover and exchanged camera for air rifle. Not that I intended to shoot a hare with an air rifle, it was simply because I wanted to move on. As soon as I emerged with the un-slung rifle, the hare bolted.

Similarly, sitting on the garden deck with my wife, we watched a magpie perched on the roof of our neighbours house. I knew that although it had most of it’s attention on our neighbours bird-table, it had half an eye on us. We were moving about, preparing a barbeque. It still perched there, not feeling at all threatened. After a while I whispered to my wife "Watch this!”. I turned to the bird and slowly raised my empty arms in a mock shooting stance. The magpie squawked away in alarm immediately. Perhaps it’s the profile of a gun (or a man’s arms) which, when horizontal, registers an alarm signal in the wild psyche?

Habitual intelligence is another trend that fascinates me as a hunter. The ability of bird and beast to memorise incident and consequence. The way they can associate activity with outcome. Sometimes, it works to their advantage. Often it can be their downfall. An example of this is the baiting of corvids. Regular baiting (shoot rabbit, paunch rabbit, leave paunch in the same spot) will get results. The crows or magpies will associate the spot with food and re-visit regularly. Once the routine is established, you can hide up and be certain of a shot or two. Shoot the spot too often, however and they will steer clear. That little memory chip in that tiny brain will now associate the location with danger. Incident and consequence.

Perhaps more impressive (or sinister) are the foxes that follow me when I’m lamping rabbits at night. Not only do they know that they are guaranteed rabbit paunches before I leave (activity and outcome), but they also seem to be sure that my air rifle is not a weapon which would threaten them. In fact, so intelligent (or reckless) was one vixen that often followed me, she ran down my beam from behind me one night to try and snatch a rabbit I had cowering in the light. She damn near got a pellet in the rear-end but I managed to pull the shot in time. She missed, for the rabbit bolted, then stood in my beam looking forlornly at the empty spot where the rabbit had squatted. I held the beam on her and she trotted back up the light, eyes like tiny moons, to position herself behind me again. Her demeanour spoke volumes .. “Lets try that again, can we?” .. though I’ve never seen the like since.

At the start of this piece, I mentioned the clamour of rooks which pass over my house before dusk. A wonderful spectacle. I can sit and watch the hordes pass over at leisure, their internal navigation fixed on some far flung evening roost. As soon as I raise a camera lens in their direction, they break formation and wheel away in dismay, avoiding my attention and clearly disturbed by it. A thousand rooks and one little dot in a garden far below, yet they know I’m looking. How do they do that?

 

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