Well just been up to the beach for my daily constitutional. What a difference to the last few days. After all that lovely bright sunshine, today it was blowing a gale fit to bust and the best description of it was beautiful but bleak.
I decided to head south today towards the nature reserve at Gibraltar Point. I have to say that I saw the most amazing spectacle, which I do not understand, and if anybody can shed any light on what I saw I would be most grateful.
There are several large grassy areas, almost like lawns on the way and on one of them I saw a murder of crows about 30 strong and a tidings of magpies about a dozen strong. They were just standing around in two significant and different groups. (A murder and a tidings are the correct names for groups of these birds).
Aha I thought, as these birds are predominantly scavengers there must be some sort of carcass about just there. I sallied forth to go and check it out, expecting these birds to take fright and flight but they didn't. I walked into the space between the two groups and they just sat there watching me. It was like something out of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, a film that if you have not seen I would highly recommend. It was a bit unnerving to be honest.
Well I can confirm that there was no carcass anywhere near them and for the life of me I cannot work out either what can have attracted them there or why both types of birds were sitting there next to each other. Perhaps it was the prelude to a bit of gang warfare.
Who knows? I don't. Do you?
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