birdwatching

There was a bird flitting around the bird table this morning that I didn't recognise.  It was little and brown, but not a wren because its tail was too long, and overall it was shaped like a small thin dunnock.  It had a long slim beak, making it an insect eater rather than a seed eater.  There was a touch of yellow around what would be its armpits, if birds had armpits.  I asked the Systems Administrator, and as soon as I mentioned the yellow tops to the wings received the confident identification that what I had seen was a goldcrest.  I said that it didn't have a crest on its head, but apparently goldcrests don't.  So there we go, I've seen a goldcrest.  I've probably seen it before, but then I didn't know what it was.

The other bird observation comes at second hand, so is hearsay evidence (and would not be admissable in court).  I hadn't realised until we got chickens that one of the things a rooster does is find nice things to eat, and stand over them clucking and encouraging his ladies to come and eat them.  Our rooster was not initially very good at this.  I think he used to show them bits of gravel.  The hens tend not to take much notice of him, which seems to hurt his feelings.  I had suggested that the Systems Administrator when supervising chicken exercise time in the evening should drop some sultanas for the rooster to find and give to the ladies.  I missed the experiment because I was at work yesterday, but apparently the sultanas were a big hit and I hope the rooster's stock has gone up in the world.

It is the next bit that is really interesting.  I normally let the chickens into their run in the mornings because I wake up first, and when I let them out of their house they get a little snack.  It used to be wet bread, and at the moment its raw porridge oats, plus a sprinkling of sultanas. (Which used to be currants, but Tesco's Value sultanas are cheaper.  That is a definition of the middle class recession, when you downgrade the daily handful of dried fruit you give to your chickens from currants to Value sultanas).  Yesterday the rooster, having presided successfully over the first helping of sultanas, went rushing over to the front door as soon as the Systems Administrator next went into the house.  The chickens normally get dried fruit from a different person (me), at a different time of day (early morning) and in a different place (their run), but after one experience of being given sultanas in the afternoon out in the garden the rooster responded to a person going back into the house (where the sultanas come from) by running to the door, not even the chicken run where he has been fed loads of times.  I think that's quite bright.  I'd be moderately impressed if a dog got the hang of that after one go.