Rookery Rooks Homepages : merlintherook.webs.com

Hi folks! I bet you've forgotten who I am as it's been such along time since my last post, sorry about  that, getting Her to do the typing for me is a tough job! I think I shall have to invest in my own computer so I don't have to rely on her! lol

Well I'm doing well (after a bit of a nasty episode yesterday) and I am loving the life of the spoilt house bird! I totally rule the roost if you'll pardon the pun and I keep every one in their rightful place which is much further down the pecking order than me!

She had a busy day yesterday which annoyed me a little, She should save all her attention for me! Anyway she had to go shopping in the morning then tidy up before visitors would arrive. Somewhere between her getting home from the supermarket and starting the tidy up I broke a blood feather on my damaged wing! Well there was blood everywhere! All over my cage, the walls and ceiling of the sitting room, on the floor and all over the sofa, what a mess! Not to mention blood pouring down my wing and clogging up all my feathers and all over my feet. I think She got a terrible fright as I've never broken one of my big blood feathers before, only a little one a couple of times.

Anyway she caught me and wrapped my up and tried to stop the bleeding and clean me up but it was a messy job! She ended up having to get one of her fledglings to wash me while she held me and tried to stop the flow of blood while her male set to cleaning up the mess from the walls and furtniture. The blood wouldn't stop and I think She was getting quite panicky about it but i just stayed quite under the towel and said nothing! Luckily She is not very squeamish unlike her Male who doesn't like blood! After about 15 minutes of cleaning up and putting pressure on the end of the broken feather She did manage to stop the blood by I was feeling quite sorry for myself by then and when She put me back in my cage I just sat and dozed for a while. She was very worried that the bleeding would start up again but also that all the stress would be too much for me.

She went and had a look online for what to do about broken blood feathers and came back to inform me that it would need to be removed! By this time her visitors had arrived so She said I could be left in peace for a couple of hours to recover before she would tackle removing it! I have to say I didn't much like the sound of that at all but I had a sleep then had some mealworms and went back to destroying my newly tidied cage! Having the feather removed was not nearly so bad as we expected and I'm much more comfortable now! Today I am back to my normal noisy, cheerful self, She hopes I will be more careful in future not to know any more of my new feathers but we'll see.

I have now got a full grown up cere and look very handsome indeed but I still don't like having my photograph taken but She says I must have at least one nice new picture taken to put on here so I guess I'll just have to or She will keep nagging me. I finally have a single tail feather but She is hopeful that by the end of my moult I will have several tail feathers. I don't know what all the fuss is about really, tail feathers just get in the way when you can't fly! My damaged wing doesn't cause me any real trouble other than not being able to tuck it up properly so She has to keep the ends of the feathers clipped to stop them catching on stuff, I hate it when it's time for that job but I'm trying to be good about it and I actually allow Her to clip those feathers and my claws when I am perched on her hand it's much nicer to have it done that way than being wrapped up in a towel!  How undignified is that!?

I think I have won the battle over the jesses! I hate them!!! I kept making such a fuss about having them on that She was scared to leave them on all the time in case I hurt myself trying to take them off so She has given up putting them on at all. (He thinks I've given up but in truth I'm only taking a break and will try them again later!)

I get very spoilt here and have all the humans jumping to attention! I get fed dinner off their plates every night not to mention bits of their toast or biscuits during the day. I come down to the bottom of the cage beside Her chair and have lovely quiet conversations with her, it makes Her happy so I don't mind. I have decided that Her bedtime is too early to be my bedtime and instead of getting onto my perch at night I come to the front of the cage and try to sweet talk Her into letting me stay up later. Sometimes it works and She gets one of her fledglings to put me to bed later but sometimes it doesn't work and She blows on me until I get on my sleeping perch!! How rude is that!? I say "Hello" now in the mornings when She gets me up, It makes her laugh and call me a very clever boy so I make sure I say "hello" every morning. She is trying to teach me to say goodnight now, does she think I'm a parrot?? Ah well, I might try and learn it one day if I can be bothered but i do have a very wide range of noises and squawks now but She likes my quiet chatty, conversations best. She says she's going to record it one day but not i I havemy way She won't! I don't like people looking at me when I'm chatting. I chat and give kisses to the rook in my mirror and the humans are very rude about it! Can't they look somewhere else?

I think I have all the inside animals sorted out now! Even the cat has stopped looking at me as if I'm his next meal! I don't like that cat one little bit! The little dog Sophie gets to stay in the room when I'm out of my cage, I think she's a little bit scared of me especially as I like to use her head as a stepping stone onto the back of the sofa! She tells me off for doing that but it is fun!

She has been muttering about taking in foster crows, I'm not sure I like that idea much, I should be the only corvid in her life! I suppose if they were only going to be here for a short while I might put up with it but I won't share my cage with them!! She can find somewhere else to put them! She does still say sometimes that She would still like a small parrot and that it would be nice company for me but I'm not so sure about that, I think I prefer to be an only bird. Having said that I do quite often answer the wild rooks when I hear them. There is a small established group of rooks that spend the day in the garden and field next to the house and I can hear them very well, they are very noisy especially when the Jackdaws are with them. There are a lot of Jackdaws outside but we haven't seen any hoodies this year at all! I think they must be spending their days on one of the neighbouring farms but She does see the Raven quite often. There are 3 of them, She reckons one must be a juvenile and their flight path takes over the top of the house. They are lovely birds, so big! But not too big for the starlings to harrass them!!

My human tells me there are nasty people out there trying to kill lots of corvids! I hope the good human can put a stop to it. Don't these stupid people realise how necessary corvids are to the environment? Our Rookery in the village seems to be relatively safe and She hasn't heard of anyone trying to kill any of the rooks or jackdaws here but She says She is just a bit too far out of the village to keep a close eye on the rookery and rescue any of the young birds that fall out of the nest, hopefully if any do some other decent human will take care of them. The locals here are not great corvid lovers and already think She is a bit odd so we don't know if anyone would consider lifting the fallen youngsters and taking them up here to be cared for. Well it's probably a bit late this year anyway, it looks like all the youngsters are fledged now although they are still obviously getting fed by their parents. She is hoping that some of the youngsters may eventually start a rookery of their own here as the one in the village only has a small stand of trees and there isn't much room for many more nests there. Time will tell I suppose.

Anyway I must go and make a mess somewhere now, got to keep my human on her toes!

Hope all you Corvid friends out there are well and enjoying the summer. Take care, 

lots of love, Magic! xx