Friday December 8 - Keep checking the Jackdaws

 This morning, with more bad weather forecast for the weekend, I decided to take advantage of favourable conditions and head for another village/town on the outskirts of my Circle. I parked in Hockley Heath and walked a substantial circuit which took me westwards to Big Spring Coppice and then back via pasture to the south of Box Trees. My big hope was to find some Waxwings in the town, but although I did locate some excellent cotoneaster bushes, the Waxwings seem not to have got here yet.

The route chosen still produced about 40 species including a few Meadow Pipits, over 100 Starlings, and lots of corvids. Fortunately I'm a bit of a nerd, so was quite happy to keep a running count for Birdtrack, including the Rooks and Jackdaws. Having already counted a flock of 112 Jackdaws near Big Spring Coppice, I noticed a similar number in a sheep field near a place marked on my map as The Barn (Motel). 

Immediately one bird stood out as different from all the rest. It had an obvious white line along the lower border of its grey shawl. I had at last found a Nordic Jackdaw. So why the italics? Well this is not a species, it is the nominate race of Jackdaw, Corvus monedula monedula. The British and Western European birds are of the race spermologus, but the guy who supplied the first latin names lived in Sweden in the eighteenth century, so Carl von Linne (Linnaeus) was only familiar with nordic Jackdaws, and they were the first to be named (nominate).

Nordic Jackdaw

Initially the bird was quite close, but as soon I had snapped its picture for the record, the group it was in flew away into the next field. I set off in pursuit and although it was now in a larger flock, the bird was quite easy to relocate.

Nordic Jackdaw standing out from the crowd

Although more distant and not very sharp, this second shot gives a better impression of how distinctive it was.

I have only ever knowingly seen two Nordic Jackdaws before, and they were present in a field in Norfolk in February 1997. I reread my notes on them and it appears I wasn't all that impressed, noting that the white streak at the bottom of the shawl was only really obvious when the birds were facing you. The same cannot be said about today's bird which was easily picked out from any angle.

I've done a bit of reading up on the sub-species since I got home, and it appears that not all nordic Jackdaws are this obvious. The Norwegian birds look very like ours, which may suggest that this bird came from Sweden. When you go even further east, Finland and beyond, the race Soemmerringii occurs, and has a very distinct white collar, but is also a shade bulkier than the nominate race. 

I had thought there was just one previous record within my Circle, found by Mike Inskip at Middle Spernal in 2015, but Jim Winsper has since let me know he saw one at Box Trees, close to where today's bird was, during BTO Atlas work in the winter of 1980/81. The odd one gets recorded in the West Midlands in most years, and it is quite likely that more occur but cannot be identified because they are too similar to the British Jackdaws.

As the old saying goes, it only takes one bird to brighten your day.