Well Readers, as I headed off towards Coldfall Wood for a late night spider walk (of which more later this week) I was interrupted by the sound of magpies. I’m used to seeing family groups around, but this was more of a magpie convention.

At one point I counted twelve magpies, all chattering away to one another, and clearly engaged by something in the gardens behind Durham Road.

Now, I’ve seen family groups of magpies gathering in the autumn before, and I’ve seen them trying to force wood pigeons or even pairs of crows to leave their nests, but this was the biggest gathering I’ve ever seen. Or maybe I’ve just not been paying enough attention.

A few thoughts occur to me. One is that there is less imperative to be territorial for birds once breeding is over for the year, and there might be a big advantage in banding together to look for food. A lot of food sources have diminished this year, what with the drought, and this could lead to larger groups of birds – many eyes are better than a few when it comes to spotting an opportunity.

Another theory is that birds spend the ‘off-season’ sizing up one another as potential mates for next year, in which case this gathering is the equivalent of the school discos that I used to go to, though with less crying in the cloakroom and snogging in dark corners.

Birds, especially corvids, will also often band together if there’s a predator around, particularly a bird of prey, a heron or an owl. In fact, locally one of the best ways of spotting a buzzard or a red kite is to watch for lots of crows heading noisily in one direction. This seemed much more like a social gathering, however, and my bet is that some lovely person on Durham Road had either deliberately or inadvertently popped out some food, which the birds had just spotted.

Whatever the reason, it seems that animals that live in large social groups are often more able to solve problems than animals of the same species that live in smaller groups – I imagine that having more complex situations to deal with helps to develop the part of the brain that needs to adapt to and take advantage of what’s going on. There’s some evidence that urban animals, particularly foxes, are also becoming more ‘intelligent’ because they have more challenges to deal with. I am a bit uncomfortable with the whole notion of ‘intelligence’ when applied to animals, because all too often it means that we value animals that seem to think like us more than animals that are more alien. Plus, how on earth do we judge? I remember that tortoises were thought not to be as intelligent as some other animals until the scientists realised that they needed wider mazes with less acute angles, at which point their performance drastically improved. Also, looking at the state of much of the world at the moment it would be difficult to argue that we’re an intelligent species, but there we go.

Harrumph! Rant over.

And over to you, Readers. Have you noticed anything unusual with your local fauna, and if so, what do you think is going on?