Every day I go out for a run and every day I encounter at least one flock of rooks. They see me coming and kick up a particular noise and I always wonder if they make the same noise for every human, or whether they’ve got a particular sound that means “here comes that crazy woman again – doesn’t look like she’s got the dog with her today, we’re probably fine.”
Because they do have different calls, almost an entire language. I don’t know all of them but I can tell when they are chatting amongst themselves or when they see a bird of prey coming a bit too close. Those are very distinct sounds. Apparently if you study them you get to learn the meaning of the sounds they make, this is why in The Cottage at the Edge of the Woods the birds have different calls and Isobel knows what they are saying.
As I run past them I greet them – in human language, obviously. I’d probably get taken off the streets if I ran along making kaa-kaa noises and, as I still don’t speak corvid, there’s the danger that I might be saying something very rude in Rook, so I stick to saying good morning. Sometimes, if a rook is sitting in a tree beside the road making its “I can see you” noise, I will smile and tell them that it’s just me. I like to keep on their good side. Corvids are clever. Apparently they can recognise different humans and I might at some time need a flock of enormous black birds on my team.
Of course, rooks aren’t the only corvids. I have crows who pop up alongside me every now and then too. They’re sleeker than rooks, with tidier wings, although you do have to get almost impolitely close before you can see the differences. There are jackdaws too. I have a pair who nest in the barn at the end of my garden – I saw them out there today eyeing up the nest hole for a new season’s brood-rearing, and at least they eat the results of my failed cookery experiments, even if they do scare the dog. This village is full of jackdaws, sitting on every roof ridge, snuggled up to chimneys to keep warm. It’s like having a very critical audience when I go out, I always feel that they are judging me. “Look at those leggings,” they are probably saying, in Bird. “What does she think she looks like?”
But they make me laugh, these clever birds, with their almost-human range of conversational noises. Unlike my heroine Libby, I don’t have a bird phobia, which given the number of them that I encounter on a daily basis, is probably a good thing. I feed them sometimes, apparently they are supposed to like soaked mealworms, but I draw the line at going running with a pocket full of wet maggots, so they get cheese. They seem to approve.