The friendly jackdaw

I stood up on the cliff top looking back over Polzeath beach as the evening began and the more serious surfers came out to play.

I spotted this jackdaw hopping across the thin grass until he came to the edge of the cliff and then hopped a few feet down over the herbs and thrift. His perch was a precipice with a drop below of about a hundred feet, which to a bird is inconsequential when they can simply fly away.  I approached it to get a closer shot and it just looked at me as I steadily inched closer and closer.  To me such a drop would have consequences.

It moved a few inches at a time and occasionally pecked at the ground as if it might just have found something to eat.  Then it looked around and up at me, then out to sea and seemed at ease.  I watched it for about twenty minutes and occasionally moved my camera away to follow some big waves rolling in from the deep towards the beach. The surfers become all became rather excited.

I changed my lens and got a tighter shot but because of the precipice I couldn’t get much closer than about ten feet away.  I think if I'd wanted to, and there hadn’t been a sheer cliff in front of me, I could have got even closer.

I felt very privileged that it let me stay with it, and I wondered if it was rather elderly as it seemed to have grey hairs like me. It didn’t seem injured and eventually flew away along the cliff edge towards the beach.  But I can’t resist blipping its ‘look’ at me, with its ‘Princess Di eyes’, as Helena has just called it.

I have added another wider shot in the ‘Extra photos’, showing the jackdaw in the foreground on the cliff edge, with Polzeath beach in the background.