This article is about the species Corvus monedula, sometimes known as the Eurasian Jackdaw. For the species Corvus dauricus of eastern Asia, see Daurian Jackdaw. For other uses, see Jackdaw (disambiguation). The Jackdaw (Corvus monedula), sometimes known as the Eurasian Jackdaw, European Jackdaw, or formerly simply daw, is one of the smallest species (34–39 cm in length) in the genus of crows and ravens.
Description
Most of the plumage is black or greyish black except for the cheeks, nape and neck, which are light grey to greyish silver. The iris of adults is greyish white or silvery white, the only member of the genus outside of the Australasian region to have this feature. The iris of juvenile jackdaws is light blue. The bird is sociable, moving around in pairs (male and female) or in larger groups, though pairs stay together within flocks.
During migration jackdaws often accompany rooks Corvus frugilegus.
Names
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-snipe) and the native English word daw. Formerly jackdaws were simply called daws (the only form in Shakespeare). Claims that the metallic chyak call is the origin of the jack part of the common name[2] are not supported by the Oxford English Dictionary.[3]
Daw is first attested in the 15th century, which the Oxford English Dictionary conjectures to be derived from an unattested Old English dawe, citing cognates in Old High German tâha, Middle High German tâhe and modern German dialect dähi, däche, dacha.
The original Old English name was ceo (pronounced with initial ch). Though now reserved for corvids of the genus Pyrrhocorax the word chough originally referred to the jackdaw.
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 dialect college = cathedral), jackerdaw, jacko, ka-wattie, and sea-crow, from their frequenting coasts. It was also frequently known quasi-nominally as Jack.[4][5][6]
Distribution and habitat
Jackdaws are found over a large area stretching from North West Africa through virtually all of Europe, including the British Isles, Turkey, Iran, north-west India, the Caucasus and Siberia, through central Asia to the eastern Himalayas and Lake Baikal. They inhabit wooded steppes, woodland, cultivated land, pasture, coastal cliffs and villages and towns.
Jackdaws are mostly resident, but the northern and eastern populations are more migratory.[7]
There are four recognised subspecies[8][9]
- nominate monedula (Linnaeus, 1758) breeding in south-east Norway, southern Sweden and northern and eastern Denmark, with occasional wintering birds in England and France; has pale nape and side of the neck, dark throat, light grey partial collar of variable extent;
- spermologus (Vieillot, 1817) of west and central Europe, wintering to the Canary Islands and Corsica; darker in colour and lacks grey collar
- soemmerringii (Fischer, 1811) of north-east Europe, and north and central Asia, from former Soviet Union to Lake Baikal and north-west Mongolia and south to Turkey, Israel and the eastern Himalayas, and winters in Iran and NW India (Kashmir); distinguished by paler nape and side of the neck creating a contrasting black crown, and lighter grey partial collar;
- cirtensis (Rothschild and Hartert, 1912) of N Africa (Morocco and Algeria)
Monedula integrates into soemmerringii with the transition zone running from Finland south across the Baltic, east Poland to Romania and Croatia.[10]
Behavior
Like magpies, jackdaws are known to steal shiny objects such as jewelry to hoard in nests.
Diet
The jackdaw mostly takes food from the ground but does take some food in trees. It eats insects and other invertebrates, weed seeds and grain, scraps of human food in towns, stranded fish on the shore, and will more readily take food from bird tables than other Corvus species.
Jackdaw snacking in Polish Winter
Nesting
Jackdaws usually nest in colonies in cavities of trees, cliffs or ruined and sometimes inhabited buildings, usually in chimneys, and even in dense conifers. They are also famous for using church steeples for nesting, a fact reported in verse by William Cowper
A great frequenter of the church,
Where, bishoplike, he finds a perch,
And dormitory too.[11]
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.[12] This behaviour has led to blocked chimneys and even nests, with the jackdaw present, crashing down into fireplaces.[13] Nest platforms can attain 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."[14]
Nests are lined with hair, rags, bark, soil, and many other materials. Jackdaws nest in colonies and often close to rooks.[15]
Eggs are smooth, glossy pale blue speckled with dark brown, approx. 36 mm by 26 mm. Clutches of normally 4-5 eggs, are incubated by the female for 17-18 days and fledge after 28-35 days, when they are fed by both parents.[16]
Voice
The call is a metallic "chyak-chyak" or "kak-kak".
Social behavior
The jackdaw is a highly sociable species outside of the breeding season, occurring in flocks that can contain hundreds of birds.[17]
Konrad Lorenz studied the complex social interactions that occur in groups of jackdaws and published his detailed observations of their social behavior in his book King Solomon's Ring. To study jackdaws, Lorenz put coloured rings on the legs of the jackdaws that lived around his house in Altenberg, Austria for identification, and he caged them in the winter because of their annual migration away from Austria. His book describes his observations on jackdaws' hierarchical group structure, in which the higher-ranking birds are dominant over lower ranked birds. The book also records his observations on jackdaws' strong male–female bonding; he noted that each bird of a pair both have about the same rank in the hierarchy, and that a low-ranked female jackdaw rocketed up the jackdaw social ladder when she became the mate of a high-ranking male.
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 chimpanzees. The function of this behaviour is not fully understood, although it has been found to be compatible with hypotheses of mutualism, reciprocity and harassment avoidance.[18]
Occasionally the flock makes 'mercy killings', in which a sick or injured bird is mobbed until it is killed.[19]
Jackdaws in culture and custom
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 is an omen of death and coming across one is considered a bad omen.[20] A jackdaw standing on the vanes of a cathedral tower is meant to prognosticate 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.[21]
Popular culture
In The Pearls of Lutra, Ninian's Church is infested with jackdaws, and some kill a young mousemaid named Piknim.
In "Someplace to be Flying", by Charles de Lint, one of the main animal-people characters, Jack, is a jackdaw. His character is the 'story-teller' of the animal-people and is depicted as compassionate, sharing and influential. All of these characters are observed in the actual habits of jackdaws.
Popular author Ken Follett has a book titled Jackdaws, set in France and England in the World War Two years.
In Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore (1878), beginning the song "Things Are Seldom What They Seem" the character Buttercup sings, "Things are seldom what they seem, Skim milk masquerades as cream; Highlows pass as patent leathers; Jackdaws strut in peacock's feathers."
In the fifth stanza of Edward Lear's The Jumblies, the Jumblies "...bought a pig, and some green jackdaws, and a lovely monkey with lollipop paws".
In Shakespeare's Othello, "But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at..."
In Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Kundera notes that Hermann Kafka, father to Franz Kafka had a sign in front of his shop with a jackdaw painted next to his name, since kavka means jackdaw in Czech.
Pink Floyd's Roger Waters references a jackdaw in his song "Flickering Flame".
In several stories from Aesop's Fables the jackdaw is referenced. Such stories are: "The Jackdaw and the Doves", "The Eagle and the Jackdaw", "The Escaped Jackdaw", "The Eagle, the Jackdaw and the Shepherd", and "The Jackdaw and His Borrowed Feathers" (which Gilbert and Sullivan's "HMS Pinafore" references in the song "Things Are Seldom What They Seem").
The sentence "Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz" is a commonly used example of a pangram, (i.e. a sentence that contains all 26 letters of the English alphabet), while the sentence itself is only 31 letters long.[22]
In 'The Magician's Nephew', by C.S. Lewis, the newly-speaking jackdaw becomes the first butt of a joke in a recently founded Narnia.
Cuffs, a local band from Columbus, Georgia, entitled their debut E.P. Jackdaw, and the third and final track on the album is entitled Jackdaw (Death Is)
External links
References
- ^ BirdLife International (2004). Corvus monedula. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 12 May 2006.
- ^ "British Garden Birds: Jackdaw".
- ^ "Oxford English Dictionary: Jackdaw. 2nd ed. 1989".
- ^ Swan, H. Kirke. A Dictionary of English and Folk-Names of British Birds, With their History, Meaning and first usage: and the Folk-lore, Weather-lore, Legends, etc., relating to the more familiar species. London: Witherby and Co. 1913.
- ^ Wright, Joseph. The English Dialect Dictionary. Six volumes. London: Henry Frowde. 1898--1905.
- ^ Swainson, Charles. Provincial Names and Folk Lore of British Birds. London: Trübner and Co., 1885.
- ^ "Identification and occurrence of "Eastern" Jackdaws in the Netherlands".
- ^ "http://www.globaltwitcher.com/artspec.asp?thingid=26248 GlobalTwitcher.com: Eurasian Jackdaw Corvus monedula]".
- ^ Lars Svensson et al., Collins Bird Guide. London: HarperCollins, 1999.
- ^ "Identification and occurrence of "Eastern" Jackdaws in the Netherlands".
- ^ The Poetical Works of William Cowper. Vol. 2. London: William Pickering, 1853. p. 336.
- ^ Wilmore, S. Bruce. Crows, jays, ravens and their relatives. London: David and Charles Ltd, 1977
- ^ Greenoak, F. All the birds of the air; the names, lore and literature of British birds. London: Book Club Associates, 1979
- ^ "[John Mason Neale A Few Words to Parish Clerks and Sextons of Country Parishes. London: Joseph Masters, 1846.]".
- ^ "British Garden Birds: Jackdaw".
- ^ "British Garden Birds: Jackdaw".
- ^ Wilmore, S. Bruce. Crows, jays, ravens and their relatives. London: David and Charles Ltd, 1977
- ^ Frequent food- and object-sharing during jackdaw (Corvus monedula) socialisation, [1].
- ^ Wilmore, S. Bruce. Crows, jays, ravens and their relatives. London: David and Charles Ltd, 1977
- ^ "Old superstitions: Jackdaw".
- ^ Swainson, Charles. Provincial Names and Folk Lore of British Birds. London: Trübner and Co., 1885.
- ^ Fun with words
|
_d1.jpg)
