Caw!

Its eyes are too small and too close together. Its powerful beak is too long for its head, and there's an ugly patch of grey, wrinkly skin.

Its 'trousers' are baggy. Its nape is glossed with violet and its long wings have a blue sheen. Strong feet gripping the fence, it hangs on tightly as it bows its head three times, giving three loud 'caws' and becoming a triangle of black crow.

Jumping off the fence and onto the lawn, the rook waddles across the grass towards the scattered sunflower seeds. The food wasn't really put out with rooks in mind, but it's too late now...

The seeds will soon be history as they're gobbled up, one by one. They're all safely stored in its now-bulging crop, protruding from below its chin like a half-inflated balloon, and the rook leaves, mission completed. I watch its flightpath and it flaps directly back to its nest, a jumble of sticks in a tall tree down the road. There, presumably, the sunflower seeds make a nutritious breakfast for a female rook incubating eggs, as I guess that it's a bit early for there to be young rooks (rooklets? rooklings? rookie-rooks?).

I love the fact that whenever I look out of my kitchen window, I'm never sure of what's going to be out there.

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