Cockling Crows

After yesterdays reflective beach scape, it’s back to the sea yet again for today’s blip. No vast expansive views this time however, but rather a focus on the avian foragers of the sands. 

The evenings see oystercatchers and sometimes other waders, but right now we’re limited to more prosaic feeders - basically just herring gulls and crows.  It’s good to see the former on the sands, searching tidal pools - their natural hunting grounds, rather than swooping down on fish and chips or ice creams on the prom. The latter are more recent interlopers, learning to dig up molluscs rather than their more traditional carrion fare - though they too join the gulls in ransacking stray rubbish left by selfish humans. 

And today it is the crows that fascinate. I love their glossy iridescence and their sculptured heads, and admire their tenacity as they grapple with too-large cockle shells, flying off to drop them on the rocks to break them open and reveal their juiciness. Learned behaviour, copied from the gulls, or the problem-solving of a creature allegedly more intelligent than a seven year old child? 

In extras there’s a collage showing the crow’s cockling technique, with the main an in flight shot as he takes off up the beach to drop this treasure from a height.