Sketchbook Rooks and the Food Music of Worms

I am still up in Lincolnshire having exchanged the high flying seagulls of the south east coast for the lovely wind tossed, scrappy black rooks who circle high above the big copper beech and roost noisily in the nearby sycamore. I am very fond of rooks and have written about them before on the blog,  see “Beastly Birds”. They are not only very bright birds but are also beautiful and very funny.

In between working on commissions I am entertaining my elderly father who luckily shares my fondness for rooks. On a recent trip out we passed a little gang of rooks who were intently prospecting for grubs on a grassy verge. We stopped to watch them for a while. They hopped and strutted about, sometimes stopping to stare at the ground, sometimes with their heads on one side, adopting a sort of listening pose.

“They always remind me of people concentrating on some sort of orchestral performance” said Dad

“Who is performing,  do you think?” I ask.

“Worms” he said, without a moment of hesitation,  “They are listening to the music of worms, they are listening to the worms playing food music.”  That’s why they are listening so carefully”

Ahhh, “food music” of course.  My father is not mad, he just has a lovely turn of phrase.

Some Sketchbook Rooks

Listening to food music….