Jackdaw
Encyclopedia
The Jackdaw sometimes known as the Eurasian Jackdaw, European Jackdaw or Western Jackdaw, is a passerine
bird in the crow family
. Found across Europe, western Asia and North Africa, it is mostly sedentary, although northern and eastern populations migrate south in winter. Four subspecies
are recognised. It was originally described as Corvus monedula by Linnaeus
, but analysis of its DNA shows it and its closest relative the Daurian Jackdaw
to be early offshoots from the genus Corvus, and distinct enough to warrant reclassification in a separate genus Coloeus
.
Measuring 34 – in length, the Jackdaw is a black-plumaged bird with a grey nape and distinctive white irises. It is an omnivorous
and opportunistic feeder, and eats a wide variety of plant material and invertebrate
s, as well as food waste from urban areas. The Jackdaw has benefited from clearing of forested areas and is found in farmland and urban areas, as well as open wooded areas and coastal cliffs.
in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae
, as Corvus monedula. The species name monedula is Latin
for Jackdaw. The genus Coloeus
was created by Peter Pallas in 1766 but most subsequent works included the Jackdaw in the genus Corvus. A 2000 study found that the genetic distance between Jackdaws and other crows to be greater than among the more typical crows. This led Pamela C. Rasmussen
to reinstate the older genus name in the Birds of South Asia (2005), a treatment also used in a 1982 systematic list in German by Hans Edmund Wolters
. A later relatively study of corvid phylogeny in 2007 that compared DNA sequences in the mitochondrial control region
found this and the closely related Daurian Jackdaw
(C. dauuricus) of eastern Russia and China to be basal
to the core Corvus clade. This genus placement has since been adopted by the International Ornithological Congress
in their official list. The two Coloeus species have been reported to hybridize in the Altai Mountains, southern Siberia, and Mongolia. Analysis of the mitochondrial DNA
of specimens of the two species from their core distribution ranges show them to be genetically distinct.
In flight, Jackdaws are separable from other corvids by their smaller size, faster and deeper wingbeats and proportionately narrower and less fingered wings. They also have a shorter, thicker neck, a much shorter bill and frequently fly in tighter flocks. The underwing is uniformly grey, unlike chough
s.
On the ground, Jackdaws have an upright posture and strut about briskly, their short legs making their gait rapid. They feed with their heads down to horizontal.
Sexes and ages are alike. Jackdaws undergo a complete moult from June to September in the western parts of their range, and a month later in the east. Immature birds are duller in plumage.
It is very similar in structure, behaviour and calls to the Daurian Jackdaw, with which its range overlaps in eastern Asia. Adults are readily distinguished, since the Daurian has a pied plumage, but immature birds are much more similar, both species having dark plumage and dark eyes. The Daurian tends to be darker, with a less contrasting nape, than its relative.
Within its range, the Jackdaw is unmistakable, its short bill and grey nape are distinguishing features. From a distance, it might be confused with a Rook
, or its silhouette in flight a pigeon or chough
.
) and the native English word daw. Formerly jackdaws were simply called daws. Claims that the metallic chyak call is the origin of the jack part of the common name are not supported by the Oxford English Dictionary
. Daw, first attested in the 15th century, is conjectured by the Oxford English Dictionary to be derived from an unattested Old English *dawe, citing cognate
s in Old High German
tāha, Middle High German
tāhe, tāchele, and modern German Dahle, Dohle, and dialectal Tach, Dähi, Däche, Dacha.
The original Old English word cēo gave modern English chough
; Chaucer
sometimes used this word, as did Shakespeare
in Hamlet
although there has been debate about which species he was referring to. This onomatopoeic name, based on the Jackdaw's call, now refers to corvids of the genus Pyrrhocorax; the Red-billed Chough
, formerly particularly common in Cornwall, became known initially as "Cornish Chough" and then just "Chough", the name transferring from one species to the other.
English dialect names are numerous. Scottish and north England dialect has had ka or kae since the 14th century. The midlands form of this was co or coo. Caddow is potentially a compound of ka and dow, a variant of daw. Other dialect or obsolete names include caddesse, cawdaw, caddy, chauk, college-bird (from dialectal college "cathedral"), jackerdaw, jacko, ka-wattie, chimney-sweep bird, from their nesting propensities, and sea-crow, from their frequenting coasts. It was also frequently known quasi-nominally as Jack.
An archaic collective noun for a group of Jackdaws is a "clattering." Another term used is "train," however, in practice, most people use the more generic term "flock".
Jackdaws are resident over a large area stretching from north-west Africa
through virtually all of Europe
, including the British Isles and southern Scandinavia, westwards through central Asia
to the eastern Himalayas
and Lake Baikal
. They are resident throughout Turkey, the Caucasus, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and north-west India. The species has a large range, with an estimated global extent of between 1,000,000 and 10,000,000 km². It has a large global population, with an estimated 10 to 29 million individuals in Europe.
Jackdaws are mostly resident, but the northern and eastern populations are more migratory, relocating to wintering areas between September and November and returning between February and early May. Their range expands northwards into Russia to Siberia during summer, and retracts in winter. Jackdaw populations congregate over winter in the Ural Valley in Northwestern Kazakhstan, north Caspian, and Tian Shan
region in western China. The species is a winter visitor to the Quetta Valley in western Pakistan They are winter vagrants to Lebanon, first recorded there in 1962. In Syria they are winter vagrants and rare residents with some confirmed breeding. Jackdaws are regionally extinct in Malta
and Tunisia
. The soemmerringii race occurs in south-central Siberia and extreme northwest China and is accidental to Hokkaido
, Japan. They are vagrants to the Faeroe Islands, particularly in the winter and spring, and rarely to Iceland.
A small number of Jackdaws reached the northwest of North America in the 1980s, presumably ship-assisted, and have been found from Atlantic Canada to Pennsylvania. They have also occurred as vagrants in the Faroe Islands
, Gibraltar
, Iceland, Mauritania
and Saint Pierre and Miquelon. The Jackdaw is reported to have once occurred in Egypt.
They inhabit wooded steppe
s, pasture and cultivated land, coastal cliffs and villages and towns. They thrive as forested areas are cleared and converted to fields and open areas. Habitats with a mix of large trees, buildings and open ground are preferred; the Jackdaw leaves more open fields to the Rook, and more wooded areas to the Common Jay. Along with other corvids such as the Rook, Raven
, and Hooded Crow
, the Jackdaw spends the European winter in urban parks. Jackdaw populations measured in three urban parks in Warsaw increase from October to December, possibly from birds wintering from areas further to the north. The same data from Warsaw, collected over the years 1977 to 2003, showed that the wintering Jackdaw population had risen 4.25 fold. The cause is unknown, but the reduction in the number of Rooks may have benefited the Jackdaw locally, or Rooks overwintering in Belarus may have driven Jackdaws from there to Warsaw.
Census of bird populations in marginal uplands in Britain show Jackdaws have greatly increased in numbers between the 1970s and 2010, although it is possibly related to recovery from previous periods of persecution.
Jackdaws frequently congregate with Hooded Crows, or Rooks, the latter particularly when migrating or roosting. They have been recorded foraging with the Common Starling, Lapwing
or Common Gull
for food in northwestern England.
Jackdaws are generally cautious of people in the forest or countryside, but much tamer in urban areas. Like magpies, they are known to steal shiny objects such as jewellery
to hoard in nests. John Gay
in his Beggar's Opera notes that "A covetous fellow, like a jackdaw, steals what he was never made to enjoy, for the sake of hiding it" and in Tobias Smollett
's The Expedition of Humphry Clinker a scathing character assassination by Mr. Bramble runs "He is ungracious as a hog, greedy as a vulture, and thievish as a jackdaw." Al Stewart's song, "Midas Shadow," contains the line, "Conquistador in search of gold for all the jackdaw reasons."
Jackdaw flocks are targets of coordinated hunting by pairs of Lanner Falcon
s (Falco biarmicus), although larger flocks are more able to elude becoming prey.
The Jackdaw tends to feed upon small invertebrate
s found above ground between 2 and 18 mm in length, including larvae and pupae of Curculionidae
, Coleoptera, Diptera
and Lepidoptera
. Snails, spiders and some insects also make up part of their animal diet. The Jackdaw will also eat small rodents, eggs, and chicks, as well as carrion, such as roadkill
. Vegetable items consumed include farm grains (barley, wheat and oats), seeds of weeds, elderberries, acorns and various cultivated fruits. A study in southern Spain examining Jackdaw pellets found they contained significant amounts of silicaceous and calcareous grit to aid digestion of vegetable food and supply dietary calcium.
Opportunistic and highly adaptable, the Jackdaw varies its diet markedly depending on available food sources. They have been recorded raiding the nests of the Skylark
(Alauda arvensis), Manx Shearwater
(Puffinus puffinus), Razorbill
(Alca torda), Common Murre (Uria aalge), Grey Heron
(Ardea cinerea), Rock Pigeon
(Columba livia), and Eurasian Collared Dove
(Streptopelia decaocto). A field study of a large city dump on the outskirts of León
in northwestern Spain showed Jackdaws forage there in the early morning and dusk, and engage in some degree of kleptoparasitism by stealth of each other.
Jackdaws practice active food sharing, where the initiative for the transfer lies with the donor, with a number of individuals, regardless of sex and kinship. They also share more of a preferred food than a less preferred food.
The Saker Falcon
(Falco cherrug) has been reported stealing food from Jackdaws on powerlines in Vojvodina
in Serbia
.
Jackdaws usually breed in colonies with monogamous pairs collaborating to locate a nest site which they then defend from other pairs and predators most of the year. They nest in cavities of trees, cliffs or ruined, and sometimes inhabited, buildings, often in chimneys, or even disused rabbit burrows. The common feature of all is a sheltered site for the nest. The availability of suitable sites influences their presence in a locale. They may use church steeples for nesting, a fact reported in verse by 18th century English poet William Cowper
Nests are usually constructed by a mated pair blocking up the crevice by dropping sticks into it; the nest is then built atop the platform formed. This behaviour has led to blocked chimneys and even nests, with the Jackdaw present, crashing down into fireplaces. Nest platforms can attain a great size — John Mason Neale notes that a "Clerk was allowed by the Churchwarden to have for his own use all that the caddows had brought into the Tower: and he took home, at one time, two cart-loads of good firewood, besides a great quantity of rubbish which he threw away."
Gilbert White
, in his The Natural History of Selborne
, notes that Jackdaws used to nest in crevices beneath the lintels of Stonehenge
, and describes an example of the bird using rabbit burrows for nest sites. The Jackdaw has been recorded outcompeting the Tawny Owl
(Strix aluco) for nest sites in the Netherlands.
Nests are lined with hair, rags, bark, soil, and many other materials. Paler than those of other corvids, the egg
s are smooth, glossy pale blue speckled with dark brown, measuring approximately 36 x 26 mm. Clutches of normally 4–5 eggs, are incubated by the female for 17–18 days until hatching as naked altricial
chicks, which are completely dependent on the adults for food. They fledge
after 28–35 days, and the parents continue to feed them for another four weeks or so.
Jackdaws hatch asynchronously and incubation begins before clutch completion, which often leads to the death of the last-hatched young. The young which die in the nest do so quickly which minimises parental investment, and hence the brood size comes to fit the available food supply.
Konrad Lorenz
's book King Solomon's Ring
records and analyses the complex social interactions in Jackdaw flocks. Lorenz studied Jackdaws living near his house in Altenberg
, Austria
, ringing them for identification, and caging them in the winter to prevent their annual migration
. He found that Jackdaws have a linear hierarchical group structure
with higher-ranked birds dominating lower-ranked birds, and that pair-bonded birds share the same rank.
Jackdaws mate for life, pairing before sexual maturity. Young males establish individual status before pairing with females. Upon pairing the female assumes the same social position as her partner. Unmated females are the lowest members in the pecking order, and are the last to have access to food and shelter.
Lorenz noted a case in which a male that was absent during the dominance struggles and pairings returned to the flock, became the dominant male, and chose one of two unmated females for a mate. This female immediately assumed the dominant position in the social hierarchy and immediately began to peck others. According to Lorenz, the most significant factor of social behaviour was the immediate and intuitive grasp of the new hierarchy by each and every Jackdaw of the flock.
Jackdaws have been observed sharing food and objects. The active giving of food is rare in primates, and in birds is found mainly in the context of parental care and courtship. Jackdaws show much higher levels of active giving than documented for chimpanzee
s. The function of this behaviour is not fully understood, although it has been found to be detached from nutrition and compatible with hypotheses of mutualism, reciprocity and harassment avoidance. It has been proposed that the sharing may be motivated by prestige enhancement.
The Jackdaw and the White-throated Magpie-Jay
are the only two corvids that display non-caching
behaviors.
Occasionally the flock makes "mercy killings" during which a sick or injured bird is mobbed until it is killed.
was isolated from the spleen
of a sick Western Jackdaw which subsequently perished. There had been an outbreak of a gastrointestinal illness in Spain which was causing mortalities and appeared to be a co-infection with Salmonella
. It has been given the provisional name of crow polyomavirus (CPyV).
The Great Spotted Cuckoo
(Clamator glandarius) is a brood parasite of this species.
saw them as a harbinger of rain (Amores 2, 6, 34). In Greek legend, a princess Arne was bribed with gold by King Minos
of Crete, and was punished for her avarice by being transformed into an equally avaricious Jackdaw, who still seeks shiny things. In Aesop's Fables
, the Jackdaw embodies stupidity in one tale, by starving while waiting for figs on a fig tree to ripen, and vanity in another – the daw sought to become king of the birds with borrowed feathers, but was shamed when they fell off. Pliny
notes how the Thessalians, Illyrians
and Lemnians cherished Jackdaws for destroying grasshoppers' eggs. The Veneti
are fabled to have bribed the Jackdaws to spare their crops. Another ancient Greek and Roman adage runs, "The swans will sing when the jackdaws are silent," meaning that educated or wise people will speak after the foolish become quiet.
In some cultures, a Jackdaw on the roof is said to predict a new arrival; alternatively, a Jackdaw settling on the roof of a house or flying down a chimney is an omen of death, and coming across one is considered a bad omen. The 12th century historian William of Malmesbury
records the story of a woman who upon hearing a Jackdaw chattering "more loudly than usual," grew pale and became fearful of suffering a "dreadful calamity", and that "while yet speaking, the messenger of her misfortunes arrived."
The Ingoldsby Legends
(1837) contains a poem named The Jackdaw of Rheims, which is about a Jackdaw who steals a cardinal's ring and is made a saint. Vincent Bourne
, a master of Westminster School, wrote a Latin poem on the jackdaw, which was translated into English by William Cowper
, and forms the opening reference to tale by George Augustus Henry Sala
about a royal wedding viewed from the point of view of a jackdaw.
A Jackdaw standing on the vanes of a cathedral tower is meant to foretell rain. Czech superstition formerly held that if jackdaws are seen quarrelling, war will follow, and that Jackdaws will not build nests at Sázava
having been banished by Saint Procopius
.
In his 1979 The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
, Milan Kundera
notes that Franz Kafka's
father Hermann had a sign in front of his shop with a Jackdaw painted next to his name, since kavka means jackdaw in Czech
.
The Jackdaw features on the Ukrainian town of Halych's
coat of arms, the town's name allegedly derived from the East Slavic
word for the bird.
In an alternative to 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
', 'Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz' also includes all of the letters of the alphabet.
Passerine
A passerine is a bird of the order Passeriformes, which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds or, less accurately, as songbirds, the passerines form one of the most diverse terrestrial vertebrate orders: with over 5,000 identified species, it has roughly...
bird in the crow family
Corvidae
Corvidae is a cosmopolitan family of oscine passerine birds that contains the crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays, magpies, treepies, choughs and nutcrackers. The common English names used are corvids or the crow family , and there are over 120 species...
. Found across Europe, western Asia and North Africa, it is mostly sedentary, although northern and eastern populations migrate south in winter. Four subspecies
Subspecies
Subspecies in biological classification, is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, ora taxonomic unit in that rank . A subspecies cannot be recognized in isolation: a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or two or more, never just one...
are recognised. It was originally described as Corvus monedula by Linnaeus
Carolus Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus , also known after his ennoblement as , was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology...
, but analysis of its DNA shows it and its closest relative the Daurian Jackdaw
Daurian Jackdaw
The Daurian Jackdaw is a member of the Corvidae or crow family of birds. It is closely related to the Eurasian Jackdaw. The name derives from the Dauria region of eastern Russia....
to be early offshoots from the genus Corvus, and distinct enough to warrant reclassification in a separate genus Coloeus
Coloeus
Coloeus is a subgenus of the bird genus Corvus, the crows and allies. It contains two relatively small species both named as jackdaws. They have a blackish crown, wings and tail, the rest of the plumage being paler....
.
Measuring 34 – in length, the Jackdaw is a black-plumaged bird with a grey nape and distinctive white irises. It is an omnivorous
Omnivore
Omnivores are species that eat both plants and animals as their primary food source...
and opportunistic feeder, and eats a wide variety of plant material and invertebrate
Invertebrate
An invertebrate is an animal without a backbone. The group includes 97% of all animal species – all animals except those in the chordate subphylum Vertebrata .Invertebrates form a paraphyletic group...
s, as well as food waste from urban areas. The Jackdaw has benefited from clearing of forested areas and is found in farmland and urban areas, as well as open wooded areas and coastal cliffs.
Taxonomy
The Jackdaw was one of the many species originally described by LinnaeusCarolus Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus , also known after his ennoblement as , was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology...
in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae
Systema Naturae
The book was one of the major works of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carolus Linnaeus. The first edition was published in 1735...
, as Corvus monedula. The species name monedula is Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
for Jackdaw. The genus Coloeus
Coloeus
Coloeus is a subgenus of the bird genus Corvus, the crows and allies. It contains two relatively small species both named as jackdaws. They have a blackish crown, wings and tail, the rest of the plumage being paler....
was created by Peter Pallas in 1766 but most subsequent works included the Jackdaw in the genus Corvus. A 2000 study found that the genetic distance between Jackdaws and other crows to be greater than among the more typical crows. This led Pamela C. Rasmussen
Pamela C. Rasmussen
Professor Pamela Cecile Rasmussen is a prominent American ornithologist and expert on Asian birds. She was formerly a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., and is based at the Michigan State University...
to reinstate the older genus name in the Birds of South Asia (2005), a treatment also used in a 1982 systematic list in German by Hans Edmund Wolters
Hans Edmund Wolters
Hans Edmund Wolters was a German ornithologist from Duisburg. In 1960, he became an associate member of the Alexander Koenig Zoological Research Institute and Museum in Bonn. He became head of the museum's Department of Ornithology in 1973. He was one of the first European ornithologists to use a...
. A later relatively study of corvid phylogeny in 2007 that compared DNA sequences in the mitochondrial control region
MtDNA control region
The mtDNA control region is an area of the mitochondrial genome which is non-coding DNA. It is the most polymorphic region of the human mtDNA genome, with polymorphism concentrated in hypervariable regions. The average nucleotide diversity in these regions is 1.7%...
found this and the closely related Daurian Jackdaw
Daurian Jackdaw
The Daurian Jackdaw is a member of the Corvidae or crow family of birds. It is closely related to the Eurasian Jackdaw. The name derives from the Dauria region of eastern Russia....
(C. dauuricus) of eastern Russia and China to be basal
Basal (phylogenetics)
In phylogenetics, a basal clade is the earliest clade to branch in a larger clade; it appears at the base of a cladogram.A basal group forms an outgroup to the rest of the clade, such as in the following example:...
to the core Corvus clade. This genus placement has since been adopted by the International Ornithological Congress
International Ornithological Congress
The International Ornithological Congress series forms the oldest and largest international series of meetings of ornithologists. It is organised by the International Ornithological Committee, a group of about 200 ornithologists...
in their official list. The two Coloeus species have been reported to hybridize in the Altai Mountains, southern Siberia, and Mongolia. Analysis of the mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA is the DNA located in organelles called mitochondria, structures within eukaryotic cells that convert the chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, adenosine triphosphate...
of specimens of the two species from their core distribution ranges show them to be genetically distinct.
Subspecies
There are four recognised subspecies. All European subspecies intergrade where their populations meet. C. m. monedula intergrades into C. m. soemmerringii with the transition zone running from Finland south across the Baltic, east Poland to Romania and Croatia.- C. m. monedula (Linnaeus, 1758), the nominate subspecies, ranges across Scandinavia, from the southern Finland south to EsbjergEsbjergEsbjerg Municipality is a municipality in Region of Southern Denmark on the west coast of the Jutland peninsula in southwest Denmark. Its mayor is Johnny Søtrup, from the Venstre political party...
and HaderslevHaderslevHaderslev is a town and municipality on the east coast of the Jutland peninsula in south Denmark. Also included is the island of Årø as well as several other smaller islands in the Little Belt. The municipality covers and has a population of 56,414 . Its mayor is Jens Christian Gjesing,...
in Denmark, and eastern Germany and Poland, and stretching south across eastern central Europe to the Carpathian Mountains and northwestern Romania, VojvodinaVojvodinaVojvodina, officially called Autonomous Province of Vojvodina is an autonomous province of Serbia. Its capital and largest city is Novi Sad...
in northern SerbiaSerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
, and SloveniaSloveniaSlovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
. It breeds in south-east Norway, southern Sweden and northern and eastern Denmark, with occasional wintering birds in England and France. It has a pale nape and side of the neck, dark throat, and a light grey partial collar of variable extent. It has been recorded as a rare vagrant to Spain. - C. m. spermologus (VieillotLouis Jean Pierre VieillotLouis Jean Pierre Vieillot was a French ornithologist.Vieillot described a large number of birds for the first time, especially those he encountered during the time he spent in the West Indies and North America, and 26 genera established by him are still in use...
, 1817) occurs in western and central Europe, from the British Isles, Netherlands and RhinelandRhinelandHistorically, the Rhinelands refers to a loosely-defined region embracing the land on either bank of the River Rhine in central Europe....
in the north, though western Switzerland and into Italy in the southeast, and the Iberian peninsula and Morocco in the south, and winters in the Canary Islands and Corsica. It is darker in colour and lacks the whitish border at the base of the grey collar. - C. m. soemmerringii (Fischer, 1811) is found in north-eastern Europe, and north and central Asia, from the former Soviet Union to Lake BaikalLake BaikalLake Baikal is the world's oldest at 30 million years old and deepest lake with an average depth of 744.4 metres.Located in the south of the Russian region of Siberia, between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast, it is the most voluminous freshwater lake in the...
and north-west Mongolia and south to Turkey, Israel and the eastern Himalayas. Its southwestern limits are Serbia and southern Romania. It winters in Iran and northern India (KashmirKashmirKashmir is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range...
). It is distinguished by its paler nape and side of the neck creating a contrasting black crown, and lighter grey partial collar. - C. m. cirtensis (RothschildWalter Rothschild, 2nd Baron RothschildLionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, Baron de Rothschild FRS , a scion of the Rothschild family, was a British banker, politician, and zoologist.-Biography:...
and HartertErnst HartertErnst Johann Otto Hartert was a German ornithologist. Hartert was born in Hamburg. He was employed by Lionel Walter Rothschild as ornithological curator of his private museum at Tring from 1892 to 1929....
, 1912) is found in MoroccoMoroccoMorocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
and AlgeriaAlgeriaAlgeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
in North Africa. The plumage is duller and more uniform dark grey, with the paler nape less distinct. It was formerly found in Tunisia.
Description
Measuring 34 –, the Jackdaw is the second smallest species in the genus Corvus. Most of the plumage is a shiny black, with a purple or blue sheen on the crown, forehead and secondaries, and a green-blue sheen on the throat, primaries, and tail. The cheeks, nape and neck are light grey to greyish-silver, and the underparts a slate-grey. The bill and legs are black. The iris of adults is greyish or silvery white. The iris of juvenile Jackdaws is light blue, then brownish, before whitening around a year of age.In flight, Jackdaws are separable from other corvids by their smaller size, faster and deeper wingbeats and proportionately narrower and less fingered wings. They also have a shorter, thicker neck, a much shorter bill and frequently fly in tighter flocks. The underwing is uniformly grey, unlike chough
Chough
The Red-billed Chough or Chough , Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax, is a bird in the crow family; it is one of only two species in the genus Pyrrhocorax...
s.
On the ground, Jackdaws have an upright posture and strut about briskly, their short legs making their gait rapid. They feed with their heads down to horizontal.
Sexes and ages are alike. Jackdaws undergo a complete moult from June to September in the western parts of their range, and a month later in the east. Immature birds are duller in plumage.
It is very similar in structure, behaviour and calls to the Daurian Jackdaw, with which its range overlaps in eastern Asia. Adults are readily distinguished, since the Daurian has a pied plumage, but immature birds are much more similar, both species having dark plumage and dark eyes. The Daurian tends to be darker, with a less contrasting nape, than its relative.
Within its range, the Jackdaw is unmistakable, its short bill and grey nape are distinguishing features. From a distance, it might be confused with a Rook
Rook (bird)
The Rook is a member of the Corvidae family in the passerine order of birds. Named by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, the species name frugilegus is Latin for "food-gathering"....
, or its silhouette in flight a pigeon or chough
Chough
The Red-billed Chough or Chough , Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax, is a bird in the crow family; it is one of only two species in the genus Pyrrhocorax...
.
Voice
Jackdaws are voluble birds. The call, frequently given in flight, is a metallic and somewhat squeaky, "chyak-chyak" or "kak-kak". Perched birds often chatter together, and before settling for the night large roosting flocks make a cackling noise. Jackdaws also have a hoarse, drawn-out alarm-call.Etymology
The common name jackdaw first appears in the 16th century, and is a compound of the forename Jack used in animal names to signify a small form (e.g. Jack SnipeJack Snipe
The Jack Snipe, Lymnocryptes minimus is a small stocky wader. It is the smallest snipe, and the only member of the genus Lymnocryptes...
) and the native English word daw. Formerly jackdaws were simply called daws. Claims that the metallic chyak call is the origin of the jack part of the common name are not supported by the Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
. Daw, first attested in the 15th century, is conjectured by the Oxford English Dictionary to be derived from an unattested Old English *dawe, citing cognate
Cognate
In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
s in Old High German
Old High German
The term Old High German refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of...
tāha, Middle High German
Middle High German
Middle High German , abbreviated MHG , is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. It is preceded by Old High German and followed by Early New High German...
tāhe, tāchele, and modern German Dahle, Dohle, and dialectal Tach, Dähi, Däche, Dacha.
The original Old English word cēo gave modern English chough
Chough
The Red-billed Chough or Chough , Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax, is a bird in the crow family; it is one of only two species in the genus Pyrrhocorax...
; Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
sometimes used this word, as did Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
in Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
although there has been debate about which species he was referring to. This onomatopoeic name, based on the Jackdaw's call, now refers to corvids of the genus Pyrrhocorax; the Red-billed Chough
Red-billed Chough
The Red-billed Chough or Chough , Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax, is a bird in the crow family; it is one of only two species in the genus Pyrrhocorax...
, formerly particularly common in Cornwall, became known initially as "Cornish Chough" and then just "Chough", the name transferring from one species to the other.
English dialect names are numerous. Scottish and north England dialect has had ka or kae since the 14th century. The midlands form of this was co or coo. Caddow is potentially a compound of ka and dow, a variant of daw. Other dialect or obsolete names include caddesse, cawdaw, caddy, chauk, college-bird (from dialectal college "cathedral"), jackerdaw, jacko, ka-wattie, chimney-sweep bird, from their nesting propensities, and sea-crow, from their frequenting coasts. It was also frequently known quasi-nominally as Jack.
An archaic collective noun for a group of Jackdaws is a "clattering." Another term used is "train," however, in practice, most people use the more generic term "flock".
Distribution and habitat
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
through virtually all of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, including the British Isles and southern Scandinavia, westwards through central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
to the eastern Himalayas
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
and Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal is the world's oldest at 30 million years old and deepest lake with an average depth of 744.4 metres.Located in the south of the Russian region of Siberia, between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast, it is the most voluminous freshwater lake in the...
. They are resident throughout Turkey, the Caucasus, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and north-west India. The species has a large range, with an estimated global extent of between 1,000,000 and 10,000,000 km². It has a large global population, with an estimated 10 to 29 million individuals in Europe.
Jackdaws are mostly resident, but the northern and eastern populations are more migratory, relocating to wintering areas between September and November and returning between February and early May. Their range expands northwards into Russia to Siberia during summer, and retracts in winter. Jackdaw populations congregate over winter in the Ural Valley in Northwestern Kazakhstan, north Caspian, and Tian Shan
Tian Shan
The Tian Shan , also spelled Tien Shan, is a large mountain system located in Central Asia. The highest peak in the Tian Shan is Victory Peak , ....
region in western China. The species is a winter visitor to the Quetta Valley in western Pakistan They are winter vagrants to Lebanon, first recorded there in 1962. In Syria they are winter vagrants and rare residents with some confirmed breeding. Jackdaws are regionally extinct in Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
and Tunisia
Tunisia
Tunisia , officially the Tunisian RepublicThe long name of Tunisia in other languages used in the country is: , is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area...
. The soemmerringii race occurs in south-central Siberia and extreme northwest China and is accidental to Hokkaido
Hokkaido
, formerly known as Ezo, Yezo, Yeso, or Yesso, is Japan's second largest island; it is also the largest and northernmost of Japan's 47 prefectural-level subdivisions. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaido from Honshu, although the two islands are connected by the underwater railway Seikan Tunnel...
, Japan. They are vagrants to the Faeroe Islands, particularly in the winter and spring, and rarely to Iceland.
A small number of Jackdaws reached the northwest of North America in the 1980s, presumably ship-assisted, and have been found from Atlantic Canada to Pennsylvania. They have also occurred as vagrants in the Faroe Islands
Faroe Islands
The Faroe Islands are an island group situated between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, approximately halfway between Scotland and Iceland. The Faroe Islands are a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, along with Denmark proper and Greenland...
, Gibraltar
Gibraltar
Gibraltar is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean. A peninsula with an area of , it has a northern border with Andalusia, Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the region...
, Iceland, Mauritania
Mauritania
Mauritania is a country in the Maghreb and West Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean in the west, by Western Sahara in the north, by Algeria in the northeast, by Mali in the east and southeast, and by Senegal in the southwest...
and Saint Pierre and Miquelon. The Jackdaw is reported to have once occurred in Egypt.
They inhabit wooded steppe
Steppe
In physical geography, steppe is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes...
s, pasture and cultivated land, coastal cliffs and villages and towns. They thrive as forested areas are cleared and converted to fields and open areas. Habitats with a mix of large trees, buildings and open ground are preferred; the Jackdaw leaves more open fields to the Rook, and more wooded areas to the Common Jay. Along with other corvids such as the Rook, Raven
Raven
Raven is the common name given to several larger-bodied members of the genus Corvus—but in Europe and North America the Common Raven is normally implied...
, and Hooded Crow
Hooded Crow
The Hooded Crow is a Eurasian bird species in the crow genus. Widely distributed, it is also known locally as Scotch Crow, Danish Crow, and Corbie or Grey Crow in Ireland, which is what its Welsh name, Brân Lwyd, translates as...
, the Jackdaw spends the European winter in urban parks. Jackdaw populations measured in three urban parks in Warsaw increase from October to December, possibly from birds wintering from areas further to the north. The same data from Warsaw, collected over the years 1977 to 2003, showed that the wintering Jackdaw population had risen 4.25 fold. The cause is unknown, but the reduction in the number of Rooks may have benefited the Jackdaw locally, or Rooks overwintering in Belarus may have driven Jackdaws from there to Warsaw.
Census of bird populations in marginal uplands in Britain show Jackdaws have greatly increased in numbers between the 1970s and 2010, although it is possibly related to recovery from previous periods of persecution.
Behaviour
Jackdaws are highly gregarious and are generally seen in small to large flocks, though males and females pair-bond for life and pairs stay together within flocks. Flock sizes increase in autumn and large flocks group together at dusk for communal roosting, up to several thousand Jackdaws gathering. 40,000 Jackdaws have been recorded at a winter roost in Uppsala in Sweden. Within a roost, mated pairs often settle together. Jackdaws become sexually mature in the first breeding season, and there is little evidence for divorce or extra-pair coupling, even after multiple instances of reproductive failure. Genetic analysis of pairs and offspring shows no evidence of extra-pair coupling. Some pairs do separate in the first few months, but almost all pairings over six months' duration are lifelong, ending only when a partner dies. Widowed or separated birds fare badly, often ousted from nests or territories and unable to rear broods alone.Jackdaws frequently congregate with Hooded Crows, or Rooks, the latter particularly when migrating or roosting. They have been recorded foraging with the Common Starling, Lapwing
Lapwing
Vanellinae are any of various crested plovers, family Charadriidae, noted for its slow, irregular wingbeat in flight and a shrill, wailing cry. Its length is 10-16 inches. They are a subfamily of medium-sized wading birds which also includes the plovers and dotterels. The Vanellinae are...
or Common Gull
Common Gull
The Common Gull or Mew Gull Larus canus is a medium-sized gull which breeds in northern Asia, northern Europe and northwestern North America. It migrates further south in winter...
for food in northwestern England.
Jackdaws are generally cautious of people in the forest or countryside, but much tamer in urban areas. Like magpies, they are known to steal shiny objects such as jewellery
Jewellery
Jewellery or jewelry is a form of personal adornment, such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, and bracelets.With some exceptions, such as medical alert bracelets or military dog tags, jewellery normally differs from other items of personal adornment in that it has no other purpose than to...
to hoard in nests. John Gay
John Gay
John Gay was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera , set to music by Johann Christoph Pepusch...
in his Beggar's Opera notes that "A covetous fellow, like a jackdaw, steals what he was never made to enjoy, for the sake of hiding it" and in Tobias Smollett
Tobias Smollett
Tobias George Smollett was a Scottish poet and author. He was best known for his picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle , which influenced later novelists such as Charles Dickens.-Life:Smollett was born at Dalquhurn, now part of Renton,...
's The Expedition of Humphry Clinker a scathing character assassination by Mr. Bramble runs "He is ungracious as a hog, greedy as a vulture, and thievish as a jackdaw." Al Stewart's song, "Midas Shadow," contains the line, "Conquistador in search of gold for all the jackdaw reasons."
Jackdaw flocks are targets of coordinated hunting by pairs of Lanner Falcon
Lanner Falcon
The Lanner Falcon is a large bird of prey that breeds in Africa, southeast Europe and just into Asia. It is mainly resident, but some birds disperse more widely after the breeding season.-Description:...
s (Falco biarmicus), although larger flocks are more able to elude becoming prey.
Feeding
The Jackdaw forages in open areas and on the ground, but does take some food in trees. Rubbish tips, bins, urban streets and gardens are also visited, more often early in the morning when there are fewer people about. Jackdaws employ various feeding methods, such as jumping, pecking, clod-turning and scattering, probing the soil, and rarely digging. Flies around cow pats are caught by jumping from the ground or at times by dropping vertically from a few metres above onto the cow pat. Earthworms are not usually extracted from the ground by Jackdaws but are eaten from freshly ploughed soil. Compared with other corvids, the Jackdaw spends more time exploring and turning over objects with its bill. A straighter and less downturned bill, and increased binocular vision are advantageous for this foraging strategy, these are more developed in this species than other corvids.The Jackdaw tends to feed upon small invertebrate
Invertebrate
An invertebrate is an animal without a backbone. The group includes 97% of all animal species – all animals except those in the chordate subphylum Vertebrata .Invertebrates form a paraphyletic group...
s found above ground between 2 and 18 mm in length, including larvae and pupae of Curculionidae
Curculionidae
Curculionidae is the family of the "true" weevils . It was formerly recognized in 1998 as the largest of any animal family, with over 40,000 species described worldwide at that time...
, Coleoptera, Diptera
Diptera
Diptera , or true flies, is the order of insects possessing only a single pair of wings on the mesothorax; the metathorax bears a pair of drumstick like structures called the halteres, the remnants of the hind wings. It is a large order, containing an estimated 240,000 species, although under half...
and Lepidoptera
Lepidoptera
Lepidoptera is a large order of insects that includes moths and butterflies . It is one of the most widespread and widely recognizable insect orders in the world, encompassing moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies, skipper butterflies, and moth-butterflies...
. Snails, spiders and some insects also make up part of their animal diet. The Jackdaw will also eat small rodents, eggs, and chicks, as well as carrion, such as roadkill
Roadkill
Roadkill is an animal or animals that have been struck and killed by motor vehicles. In the United States of America, removal and disposal of animals struck by motor vehicles is usually the responsibility of the state's state trooper association or department of transportation.-History:During the...
. Vegetable items consumed include farm grains (barley, wheat and oats), seeds of weeds, elderberries, acorns and various cultivated fruits. A study in southern Spain examining Jackdaw pellets found they contained significant amounts of silicaceous and calcareous grit to aid digestion of vegetable food and supply dietary calcium.
Opportunistic and highly adaptable, the Jackdaw varies its diet markedly depending on available food sources. They have been recorded raiding the nests of the Skylark
Skylark
The Skylark is a small passerine bird species. This lark breeds across most of Europe and Asia and in the mountains of north Africa. It is mainly resident in the west of its range, but eastern populations are more migratory, moving further south in winter. Even in the milder west of its range,...
(Alauda arvensis), Manx Shearwater
Manx Shearwater
The Manx Shearwater is a medium-sized shearwater in the seabird family Procellariidae. The scientific name of this species records a name shift: Manx Shearwaters were called Manks Puffins in the 17th century. Puffin is an Anglo-Norman word for the cured carcasses of nestling shearwaters...
(Puffinus puffinus), Razorbill
Razorbill
The Razorbill is colonial seabird that will only come to land in order to breed. It is the largest living member of the Auk family. This agile bird will choose only one partner for life and females will lay one egg per year. Razorbills will nest along coastal cliffs in enclosed or slightly exposed...
(Alca torda), Common Murre (Uria aalge), Grey Heron
Grey Heron
The Grey Heron , is a wading bird of the heron family Ardeidae, native throughout temperate Europe and Asia and also parts of Africa. It is resident in the milder south and west, but many birds retreat in winter from the ice in colder regions...
(Ardea cinerea), Rock Pigeon
Rock Pigeon
The Rock Dove or Rock Pigeon, is a member of the bird family Columbidae . In common usage, this bird is often simply referred to as the "pigeon"....
(Columba livia), and Eurasian Collared Dove
Eurasian Collared Dove
The Eurasian Collared Dove most often simply called the Collared Dove, also sometimes hyphenated as Eurasian Collared-dove is a species of dove native to Asia and Europe, and also recently introduced in North America....
(Streptopelia decaocto). A field study of a large city dump on the outskirts of León
León, Spain
León is the capital of the province of León in the autonomous community of Castile and León, situated in the northwest of Spain. Its city population of 136,985 makes it the largest municipality in the province, accounting for more than one quarter of the province's population...
in northwestern Spain showed Jackdaws forage there in the early morning and dusk, and engage in some degree of kleptoparasitism by stealth of each other.
Jackdaws practice active food sharing, where the initiative for the transfer lies with the donor, with a number of individuals, regardless of sex and kinship. They also share more of a preferred food than a less preferred food.
The Saker Falcon
Saker Falcon
The Saker Falcon is a very large falcon. This species breeds from eastern Europe eastwards across Asia to Manchuria. It is mainly migratory except in the southernmost parts of its range, wintering in Ethiopia, the Arabian peninsula, northern Pakistan and western China...
(Falco cherrug) has been reported stealing food from Jackdaws on powerlines in Vojvodina
Vojvodina
Vojvodina, officially called Autonomous Province of Vojvodina is an autonomous province of Serbia. Its capital and largest city is Novi Sad...
in Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
.
Breeding
William Cowper
William Cowper was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry...
A great frequenter of the church,
Where, bishoplike, he finds a perch,
And dormitory too.
Nests are usually constructed by a mated pair blocking up the crevice by dropping sticks into it; the nest is then built atop the platform formed. This behaviour has led to blocked chimneys and even nests, with the Jackdaw present, crashing down into fireplaces. Nest platforms can attain a great size — John Mason Neale notes that a "Clerk was allowed by the Churchwarden to have for his own use all that the caddows had brought into the Tower: and he took home, at one time, two cart-loads of good firewood, besides a great quantity of rubbish which he threw away."
Gilbert White
Gilbert White
Gilbert White FRS was a pioneering English naturalist and ornithologist.-Life:White was born in his grandfather's vicarage at Selborne in Hampshire. He was educated at the Holy Ghost School and by a private tutor in Basingstoke before going to Oriel College, Oxford...
, in his The Natural History of Selborne
The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne
The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, or just The Natural History of Selborne is a book by pioneering English naturalist and ornithologist Gilbert White first published in 1789...
, notes that Jackdaws used to nest in crevices beneath the lintels of Stonehenge
Stonehenge
Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument located in the English county of Wiltshire, about west of Amesbury and north of Salisbury. One of the most famous sites in the world, Stonehenge is composed of a circular setting of large standing stones set within earthworks...
, and describes an example of the bird using rabbit burrows for nest sites. The Jackdaw has been recorded outcompeting the Tawny Owl
Tawny Owl
The Tawny Owl or Brown Owl is a stocky, medium-sized owl commonly found in woodlands across much of Eurasia. Its underparts are pale with dark streaks, and the upperparts are either brown or grey. Several of the eleven recognised subspecies have both variants...
(Strix aluco) for nest sites in the Netherlands.
Nests are lined with hair, rags, bark, soil, and many other materials. Paler than those of other corvids, the egg
Egg (biology)
An egg is an organic vessel in which an embryo first begins to develop. In most birds, reptiles, insects, molluscs, fish, and monotremes, an egg is the zygote, resulting from fertilization of the ovum, which is expelled from the body and permitted to develop outside the body until the developing...
s are smooth, glossy pale blue speckled with dark brown, measuring approximately 36 x 26 mm. Clutches of normally 4–5 eggs, are incubated by the female for 17–18 days until hatching as naked altricial
Altricial
Altricial, meaning "requiring nourishment", refers to a pattern of growth and development in organisms which are incapable of moving around on their own soon after hatching or being born...
chicks, which are completely dependent on the adults for food. They fledge
Fledge
Fledge is the stage in a young bird's life when the feathers and wing muscles are sufficiently developed for flight. It also describes the act of a chick's parents raising it to a fully grown state...
after 28–35 days, and the parents continue to feed them for another four weeks or so.
Jackdaws hatch asynchronously and incubation begins before clutch completion, which often leads to the death of the last-hatched young. The young which die in the nest do so quickly which minimises parental investment, and hence the brood size comes to fit the available food supply.
Social behaviour
The Jackdaw is a highly sociable species outside of the breeding season, occurring in flocks that can contain hundreds of birds.Konrad Lorenz
Konrad Lorenz
Konrad Zacharias Lorenz was an Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch...
's book King Solomon's Ring
King Solomon's Ring (nonfiction)
King Solomon's Ring is a zoological book for the general audience, written by the Austrian scientist Konrad Lorenz in 1949. The first English-language edition appeared in 1952....
records and analyses the complex social interactions in Jackdaw flocks. Lorenz studied Jackdaws living near his house in Altenberg
Sankt Andrä-Wördern
Sankt Andrä-Wördern is a municipality in the district of Tulln in Lower Austria, Austria.- External links :* - town website...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, ringing them for identification, and caging them in the winter to prevent their annual migration
Bird migration
Bird migration is the regular seasonal journey undertaken by many species of birds. Bird movements include those made in response to changes in food availability, habitat or weather. Sometimes, journeys are not termed "true migration" because they are irregular or in only one direction...
. He found that Jackdaws have a linear hierarchical group structure
Dominance hierarchy
A dominance hierarchy is the organization of individuals in a group that occurs when competition for resources leads to aggression...
with higher-ranked birds dominating lower-ranked birds, and that pair-bonded birds share the same rank.
Jackdaws mate for life, pairing before sexual maturity. Young males establish individual status before pairing with females. Upon pairing the female assumes the same social position as her partner. Unmated females are the lowest members in the pecking order, and are the last to have access to food and shelter.
Lorenz noted a case in which a male that was absent during the dominance struggles and pairings returned to the flock, became the dominant male, and chose one of two unmated females for a mate. This female immediately assumed the dominant position in the social hierarchy and immediately began to peck others. According to Lorenz, the most significant factor of social behaviour was the immediate and intuitive grasp of the new hierarchy by each and every Jackdaw of the flock.
Jackdaws have been observed sharing food and objects. The active giving of food is rare in primates, and in birds is found mainly in the context of parental care and courtship. Jackdaws show much higher levels of active giving than documented for chimpanzee
Chimpanzee
Chimpanzee, sometimes colloquially chimp, is the common name for the two extant species of ape in the genus Pan. The Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:...
s. The function of this behaviour is not fully understood, although it has been found to be detached from nutrition and compatible with hypotheses of mutualism, reciprocity and harassment avoidance. It has been proposed that the sharing may be motivated by prestige enhancement.
The Jackdaw and the White-throated Magpie-Jay
White-throated Magpie-jay
The White-throated Magpie-Jay, Calocitta formosa, is a large Central American jay species. It ranges in Pacific-slope thornforest from Jalisco, Mexico to Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Magpie-jays are noisy, gregarious birds, often traveling in easy-to-find flocks, mobbing their...
are the only two corvids that display non-caching
Hoarding (animal behavior)
Hoarding or caching is a type of animal behavior where an animal will store its food in times of surplus for times when food is less plentiful...
behaviors.
Occasionally the flock makes "mercy killings" during which a sick or injured bird is mobbed until it is killed.
Parasites and diseases
A polyomavirusPolyomavirus
Polyomavirus is the sole genus of viruses within the family Polyomaviridæ. Murine polyomavirus was the first polyomavirus discovered by Ludwik Gross in 1953. Subsequently, many polyomaviruses have been found to infect birds and mammals...
was isolated from the spleen
Spleen
The spleen is an organ found in virtually all vertebrate animals with important roles in regard to red blood cells and the immune system. In humans, it is located in the left upper quadrant of the abdomen. It removes old red blood cells and holds a reserve of blood in case of hemorrhagic shock...
of a sick Western Jackdaw which subsequently perished. There had been an outbreak of a gastrointestinal illness in Spain which was causing mortalities and appeared to be a co-infection with Salmonella
Salmonella
Salmonella is a genus of rod-shaped, Gram-negative, non-spore-forming, predominantly motile enterobacteria with diameters around 0.7 to 1.5 µm, lengths from 2 to 5 µm, and flagella which grade in all directions . They are chemoorganotrophs, obtaining their energy from oxidation and reduction...
. It has been given the provisional name of crow polyomavirus (CPyV).
The Great Spotted Cuckoo
Great Spotted Cuckoo
The Great Spotted Cuckoo is a member of the cuckoo order of birds, the Cuculiformes, which also includes the roadrunners, the anis and the coucals....
(Clamator glandarius) is a brood parasite of this species.
Cultural depictions and folklore
Ancient Greek authors tell how a Jackdaw, being a social creature, may be caught with a dish of oil which it falls into while looking at its own reflection. The Roman poet OvidOvid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
saw them as a harbinger of rain (Amores 2, 6, 34). In Greek legend, a princess Arne was bribed with gold by King Minos
Minos
In Greek mythology, Minos was a king of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa. Every year he made King Aegeus pick seven men and seven women to go to Daedalus' creation, the labyrinth, to be eaten by The Minotaur. After his death, Minos became a judge of the dead in Hades. The Minoan civilization of Crete...
of Crete, and was punished for her avarice by being transformed into an equally avaricious Jackdaw, who still seeks shiny things. In Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables or the Aesopica are a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE. The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today...
, the Jackdaw embodies stupidity in one tale, by starving while waiting for figs on a fig tree to ripen, and vanity in another – the daw sought to become king of the birds with borrowed feathers, but was shamed when they fell off. Pliny
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
notes how the Thessalians, Illyrians
Illyrians
The Illyrians were a group of tribes who inhabited part of the western Balkans in antiquity and the south-eastern coasts of the Italian peninsula...
and Lemnians cherished Jackdaws for destroying grasshoppers' eggs. The Veneti
Veneti
Veneti may refer to:*Veneti , an ancient Celtic tribe described by classical sources as living in what is now Brittany, France*Adriatic Veneti, an ancient historical people of northeastern Italy, who spoke an Indo-European language related to the Italic languages*Vistula Veneti, an ancient...
are fabled to have bribed the Jackdaws to spare their crops. Another ancient Greek and Roman adage runs, "The swans will sing when the jackdaws are silent," meaning that educated or wise people will speak after the foolish become quiet.
In some cultures, a Jackdaw on the roof is said to predict a new arrival; alternatively, a Jackdaw settling on the roof of a house or flying down a chimney is an omen of death, and coming across one is considered a bad omen. The 12th century historian William of Malmesbury
William of Malmesbury
William of Malmesbury was the foremost English historian of the 12th century. C. Warren Hollister so ranks him among the most talented generation of writers of history since Bede, "a gifted historical scholar and an omnivorous reader, impressively well versed in the literature of classical,...
records the story of a woman who upon hearing a Jackdaw chattering "more loudly than usual," grew pale and became fearful of suffering a "dreadful calamity", and that "while yet speaking, the messenger of her misfortunes arrived."
The Ingoldsby Legends
The Ingoldsby Legends
The Ingoldsby Legends is a collection of myths, legends, ghost stories and poetry written supposedly by Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor, actually a pen-name of an English clergyman named Richard Harris Barham....
(1837) contains a poem named The Jackdaw of Rheims, which is about a Jackdaw who steals a cardinal's ring and is made a saint. Vincent Bourne
Vincent Bourne
Vincent Bourne, familiarly known as Vinny Bourne was an English classical scholar.Vincent Bourne was the son of Andrew Bourne of Westminster. In 1710 he became a scholar at Westminster School, and in 1714 entered Trinity College, Cambridge. He graduated in 1717, and obtained a fellowship three...
, a master of Westminster School, wrote a Latin poem on the jackdaw, which was translated into English by William Cowper
William Cowper
William Cowper was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry...
, and forms the opening reference to tale by George Augustus Henry Sala
George Augustus Henry Sala
George Augustus Henry Sala , English journalist.-Biography:Sala was born in London; his father being the son of an Italian who came to London to arrange ballets at the theatres, and his mother an actress and teacher of singing...
about a royal wedding viewed from the point of view of a jackdaw.
A Jackdaw standing on the vanes of a cathedral tower is meant to foretell rain. Czech superstition formerly held that if jackdaws are seen quarrelling, war will follow, and that Jackdaws will not build nests at Sázava
Sázava (Benešov District)
Sázava is a town in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has around 3,800 inhabitants.Villages Bělokozly, Černé Budy, Čeřenice and Dojetřice are administrative parts of Sázava....
having been banished by Saint Procopius
Procopius of Sázava
Saint Procopius of Sázava was a Czech saint. He studied at Prague where he was also ordained. He was a canon and a hermit and then became the founding abbot of Sázava near Prague. He is an alleged author of the Reims Gospel....
.
In his 1979 The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is a novel by Milan Kundera, published in 1979. It is composed of seven separate narratives united by some common themes. The book considers the nature of forgetting as it occurs in history, politics and life in general...
, Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera , born 1 April 1929, is a writer of Czech origin who has lived in exile in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1981. He is best known as the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Joke. Kundera has written in...
notes that Franz Kafka's
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
father Hermann had a sign in front of his shop with a Jackdaw painted next to his name, since kavka means jackdaw in Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
.
The Jackdaw features on the Ukrainian town of Halych's
Halych
Halych is a historic city on the Dniester River in western Ukraine. The town gave its name to the historic province and kingdom of Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, of which it was the capital until the early 14th century, when the seat of the local princes was moved to Lviv...
coat of arms, the town's name allegedly derived from the East Slavic
East Slavic languages
The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of Slavic languages, currently spoken in Eastern Europe. It is the group with the largest numbers of speakers, far out-numbering the Western and Southern Slavic groups. Current East Slavic languages are Belarusian, Russian,...
word for the bird.
In an alternative to 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is an English-language pangram, that is, a phrase that contains all of the letters of the alphabet. It has been used to test typewriters and computer keyboards, and in other applications involving all of the letters in the English alphabet...
', 'Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz' also includes all of the letters of the alphabet.
Further reading
- Birding WorldBirding WorldBirding World is a monthly birding magazine published in the United Kingdom. It is the magazine of the Bird Information Service, based at Cley next the Sea, Norfolk....
. Harrop, Andrew (2000). "Identification of Jackdaw forms in northwestern Europe." v 13. n 7. pp 290–295.
External links
- Jackdaw videos, photos and sounds on the Internet Bird Collection
- Ageing and sexing (PDF), by Javier Blasco-Zumeta