We were lazing around in the garden one shimmering summer Sunday afternoon. On two sides classic Herefordshire. A wood of oak and chestnut bordering the deer park on one side, separated from the deer park by old slightly derelict cider orchards. The best kind of cider orchards. Below across the valley, red marl cliffs above a meander of the Wye, topped with gnarly chestnut trees, and more woods in the distance (beyond the plastic strawberry tunnels).
On the other two sides is the farm. One side is a big stone barn; on the other side, over the garden hedge, is one of the ugliest, filthiest most disorganised farmyards I know, and that’s saying something.
Being summer, the yards, or folds, were deserted, and the cattle out grazing in the deer park. But every now and then from the empty yards came the report of a shotgun, and overhead jackdaws were flying around cawing in a way that sounded very distressed.
I should say here that one of the common sounds here was the conversation of the ravens up on the hill above the deer park. You didn’t have to be very sensitive to get the impression that this pair of ravens was having conversations. That’s what it sounds like. Since then I have read accounts of research at a raven roost on Anglesey where the roosting ravens have been shown to use their time roosting to inform their neighbours in the roost about food sources they have discovered during the day. The scientists theorise that one of the functions of the roost is to share information. The intelligence of ravens and jackdaws and other corvids is thought to compare with that of the higher primates.
I’m not saying that it is worse to shoot jackdaws because they are intelligent, but it might be. You can make your own mind up on that, I suppose. If you think it’s alright, the best way to shoot them is to wait for a family party to fly over, and shoot one of them. If it is wounded and flaps around on the ground, that is ideal, because jackdaws behave as if they care about each other. (Note how carefully I phrased that). When I was a boy I tried to tame two young jackdaws that came down my bedroom chimney. I had to give up because all the jackdaws in the area came round calling to see if they would, as it were, come out to play. I had to let them go in the end. So the shooter’s trick is to wait for the other jackdaws to come to the aid of their injured relative, and shoot another one. It’s very effective. The jackdaws behave as if their concern for one another is stronger than their fear.
After a while I couldn’t stand the calling and the shooting any more and I went round into the farm yard. I asked the gunman why he was shooting the jackdaws. ‘They’m vermin’, he said. I asked him what that meant. ‘ They’m vermin’, he said again. I tried another approach, and asked him what harm they did. He said they ate the maize grains in the silage fed to the cattle, though at that time of year the cattle were in the deerpark, feeding on the grass. I said that the farmer was a wealthy man and could afford to feed a few birds. He had no more arguments, because the real reason he was shooting was because he enjoyed it, and he didn’t want to tell me that. So he said ‘Why don’t you fuck off back to where you come from?’ I knew that this hinted at the country notion that people who don’t enjoy blood sports are all ‘from off’, so I said ‘I’ve lived in Herefordshire since 1946. Where do you suggest I fuck off back to?’ ‘Just fuck off anyway’, he said. Which I did.
He stopped shooting though, and he didn’t come back again. I often wonder whether, if he had known how soon he was to die himself, of a sudden and very aggressive cancer, he might have felt differently about taking the lives of other creatures.
In the first conversation I had with the farmer next door he worked out I was a vegan. The next time he saw me he asked me what my policy on moles would be. "Live and let live" I replied. You know they will come over your place onto mine he complained. Well perhaps they will like it well enough on mine and stay I replied. He muttered something about that our horses would break their legs down a molehill. Interestingly we get on really well now (six years later). Even though I am a mad vegan rewilder he respects that I am at least doing something with the land. I dont plant willows near his boundaries, I fix dry stone walls and I give him the odd bottle of elderberry wine off my fan trained elders. We dont talk about the moles though.
I doubt that very much. A great article though.