When I bought this beautifully-produced book, Corvus, A Life With Birds, I hadn’t fully realised that it would be more about living with birds than watching them. However, I soon realised that Esther Woolfson has long experience of nurturing and co-habiting with lost and abandoned birds, most of which would have been destined to an early death had it not been for her intervention.
The story begins simply enough with a set (flock? batch? colony?) of doves, which were kept in a converted coal shed. But it does not take long before birds are in the house, when Esther’s daughter Bec is given a cockatiel, named Bardie, for her 12th birthday. On the principle that “one bird swiftly begets more”, a stream of injured, dying, abandoned, runty fledglings arrives in the house, leading Esther to find out how to raise infant birds. More birds follow, but it is when an infant rook arrives in a box with the unlikely name Chicken that the story really gets under-way.
Esther learns that a rook should be fed on a mixture of rodents, chicks and insects, but replaces this diet with minced-beef, eggs and chopped-up nuts on which she soon thrived. Within weeks she was testing her wings and then flew onto the kitchen table. A house was constructed for her (never “cage” - and she was only put in it at night), but Chicken seemed to have a strong building instinct and began to pick at the plaster on the wall beside her house, leaving large holes. She was with the family constantly, playing with rubber mice, picking at the hems of jeans, flying on to the tops of cupboards and generally possessed of an insatiable curiosity.
It was unlikely that Chicken could be returned to the wild, and so as she became adult, Esther began to clip her wings (by removing the secondary feathers) so that she could not injure herself by flying into neighbouring gardens where cats lurked, or by flying around the house and being entangled in light fittings.
Chicken soon became fully integrated into the family and her “house” was eventually moved into Esther’s study where both bird and human work together. Esther works by writing, while Chicken works,
One notable feature of Chicken’s behaviour is her obsessive interest in “caching”, collecting and storing food. She does it,
Spike the magpie also has this habit, but his caching site of choice is books,
The physical qualities of books delighted him, the secret interstices that lurk between pages, the presentation of a manifold profusion of caching sites. The turning of each page was an opportunity, each a place where an item could be stored safely, unseen, remembered: half a prawn, a piece of Brie, a tiny sliver of cod.
The ability to tolerate life with a bird must be a rare gift. As I read the book, I couldn’t help but think of the mess (of various types!) that must be frequently cleared up. Esther Woolfson seems to take this in her stride, even when another Corvid, a magpie called Spike joins the household. She notes that,
. . . with corvids at least, their seems to be a connection between self-expression and defecation, for addressing Chicken in a particularly interlocutory way will bring about an answering, head-bending calling, followed by the luscious, liquid sound by the squeeeeak! splat! that seens its natural adjunct.
Not many people would be able to tolerate that in their home!
The birds have a built in clock which drives them to seasonal behaviour of nesting. A house bound bird, Chicken builds her nest under the dining table, from torn-up newspaper, an old sock, a couple of floor cloths. She will not tolerate any attempt to tidy the edges of the nest and her hormones compel her to “engage the broom in combat”. When she lays her eggs, she has to be hand-fed until one day she seems to lose interest in sitting and leaves the nest, allowing Esther to slowly dismantle and remove her temporary home.
The book is a wealth of information on crows and their behaviour, both in the home and in the wild and Esther explores the folklore and mythology of these great black birds which have inspired such mistrust and superstition over the years. The book actually covers all birds, whether wild or domestic and I learned about aspects of their behaviour and habits which I had not encountered before.
Esther Woolfson writes elegantly and precisely. While imparting much factual information, part of the book’s charm is in the speculation about bird-life and the relationship of birds with humans. There is a richness of experience here which can only inspire readers to take more notice of the birds in their gardens.
In conclusion let me congratulate artist Helen MacDonald on the many excellent drawings which illustrate this book.
Interesting point of view, thank you for sharing it.