Jackdaws

[4Shoes]

Went out today to discover that the jackdaws had removed the wire netting from my chimney and had started to move in

I had put a ball of wire netting in the chimney to stop them nesting. At the time I didn't stuff it in hard. They had pulled the ball of netting back out the pot and I found it at my back door.

Ball back in chimney with loop of wire around rim to hold it in place.

but how smart was that... and how much effort.

[Snoop Puss]

They're clever birds, for sure.

[nickdub]

Ball back in chimney with loop of wire around rim to hold it in place.

but how smart was that... and how much effort.

Hard to say, sounds a bit of a faff - anyway you were the one doing it, so you should be able to tell us how tricky it was. :-)

[4Shoes]

Hard to say, sounds a bit of a faff - anyway you were the one doing it, so you should be able to tell us how tricky it was. :-)

The Jackdaws

Took me 2mins

[nickdub]

Couldn't resist - sorry - I'll have the mods on my case if I keep being naughty I expect :-)

[mothhawk]

A lady I worked for had one of those H shaped chimney cowls put on the chimney after clearing out the jackdaw nesting material. The jackdaws worked out how to manoeuvre and negotiate themselves, sticks, and other nesting material through the H shape and back into the chimney. And this chimney serviced the Aga which was lit all the time. They must have thought it was a nice warm place to raise chicks. Very determined, very intelligent birds, jackdaws.

And it's amazing how many sticks they patiently persist in dropping down the chimney until finally one lodges and wedges and the rest build up on it into a nest.

[4Shoes]

Wire netting lets the smoke out and in theory keep the Jackdaws out.

I had Just cleaned out the chimney this year and took 2 barrow loads of "nesting material " to the compost heap. Most of it was horse "**" and caused a major damp patch.

Chimney was not in use. but nice to have the option

[Vince G]

All corvids (crows) are highly intelligent. I have tried numerous ways of trying to outfox magpies from taking food I put out that I'd rather attract other birds to. Not that I dislike magpies, far from it, they get a bad press and a lot of idiots back some sort of cull, but they are intelligent and merely exploit the opportunities that present themselves, and on examination through binoculars, they are stunning birds.

My neighbour bangs on about how they rob other birds' nests of eggs or chicks which they sometimes do, but local squirrels are worse. In fact he has a magpie nest in a large tree in his garden and I saw a squirrel being mobbed by the magpies as it was threatening their nest the other day.

There are about half a million magpies in the UK, and five times that many grey squirrels. Any cull needs to be aimed at the alien invader grey squirrel, which is actually very tasty (sorry VC), as my mate's Italian in-laws will testify, because he picks them off the walnut tree they come after and his missus bungs them in the ragú !!

[DannyK]

You can add parakeets to the cull. They're flying secateurs removing buds, fruit and other bits with abandon.

I had cages fitted to my chimneys so they could be swept. It's squirrels that are the problem here. Years ago one came down my neighbour's chimney. We eventually contained and dispatched it. Not one of over a hundred pieces of Moorcroft pottery was damaged!

[Stan79]

We have a thatched cottage and the rooks and jackdaws have already started in on the new roof, pulling stalks out for their nests... very annoying!

Our chimney has a cowl over it and they seem to stay out of it but they are in and out of the other 7 chimneys in the houses around us all the time!

[1Bee]

We had two crows down the chimney once, in spring.*

They accounted for two of my vintage Denby jugs, fluttering over the tops of the kitchen cupboards trying to get out the skylights.

Poor Husband walked into the house and got a strange sense that something wasn't quite right when he saw our cats cowering under the dining room table staring at him in that way that they have when they want to say, "Fix it. Fix it now."

He then saw the soot, the poop, and the broken pottery.... but didn't have much trouble shooing the visitors out a window.

Mind you, for ages we had a perfect sooty outline of a crow on our mantelpiece mirror. You could see the detail of every feather. It was too perfect to clean off!

*Pause for a moment and consider what activity two crows would have been engaging in on top of a chimney pot which would have distracted and unbalanced them sufficiently to fall down a chimney together. Poor things. The earth moved...