like swallows or starlings the jackdaws balance on power line in uncomfortable rows as though it’s not quite in their nature to do so, but unlike the swallows and starlings they’re envious of their aerial attires and skill in the air, swallows the acrobats, starlings the dazzlers, both unaware of banquet of envious eyes looking on and wishing, wishing, why they weren’t born a swallow or starling and instead just a jackdaw, the colours of shadows and all too soon sporting tinges of grey as though aging before ones time, though their beady blue eyes are a sight to behold as little they know that blue eyes are rare in this avian world, almost but not quite unique… and they balance quiet well but not quite as deft as swallows or starlings with their delicate claws as opposed to the slightly more wrinkly digits adorning the jackdaws legs… the jack’ is an envious bird as can be heard in their infernal squabbling during the day they crackle away and come the night the gossip on every complaint while they wait and they wait and they wait balanced on power lines, waiting and waiting some more until… well, until none of them knows what happens and drives them back on the air in a race to the rookery (see, it’s not even named after them… o the poor jackdaw!) to play musical branches once again a free-for-all frenzy and made even worse when a headwind’s determined to foil their best-laid plotting and scheming, most unlike the swallows and starlings to whom the jackdaws see have got their collective acts together… or have they?… the swallow who constantly worries about eating enough and not eating too much for a thousand and more miles of migration south through paroxysms of weather, sportsmen with guns, wind determined to blow them off course…. and the starling, safer in numbers than out of their own and suitably small for a sparrowhawks beak, or even a kestrels, a buzzards, a magpie, maybe an occasional crow and even when they find succour among the tall reeds in their hundreds and thousands there’s weasels and ferrets, foxes and cats and even a bittern or heron ready to gobble them up so…… so the jackdaws look on unaware that maybe, just maybe it could be much worse……… but, but why couldn’t they have a nice song to sing!
© 2018 robert greig
