Jackdaw – small bird crow image. The plumage is all black with a dim metallic sheen, only on nape and neck feathers are ash-gray. The size of a jackdaw crows are much smaller, with body length of 34.2-35.5 cm. and weight less than 200 g.
Jackdaws are very sociable, from spring to autumn hold with the rooks. Spring birds side by side follow the tractors, searching on the piles of earth earthworms and insects. In the summer, along with rooks and starlings flying on the harvested fields and mown meadows. Some pick up fallen grain, catch other insects, often Orthoptera.
After the departure of the rooks jackdaws join the flocks of sulphur crows. Together with them we spend the night on high trees in urban parks and yards. With the dawn of flying outside the city, feed on the waste dumps and scour the roadsides. Waste from garbage dumps in the winter diet of the jackdaws play a very significant role.
Traces daws similar to the marks of crows and rooks, but the prints of its paws are much smaller. Largest they can be confused with traces of forty. But forty moves mostly at a gallop, and the checkbox goes hasty springy step, focusing mainly on the fingers. Because of this, the average plantar callus on the traces of the often poorly printed.
Besides, jackdaws, several fingers thick, and the claws shorter and dumber. This is reflected in the length of the print. The imprint of the foot jackdaws slightly shorter than itself magpies. Its size (with claws) of 6.3×2.8 cm Length of the claw of the middle toe 0,6, 0,8 cm back Length of 13-15 step, the width of the trace track about 5 cm Step almost straight, slightly tilted to the middle finger inside.
Unlike crows jackdaws not to destroy bird nests or do it rarely. They destroy many insect pests than bring undoubted benefits. But sometimes it can cause damage to the melon plantations, and vegetable gardens. In some years, late autumn I caught jackdaws feeding on Aronia melanocarpa, although usually they didn’t hurt her.
Jackdaws nest in small colonies or pairs. They make their nests in attics, under the eaves of buildings and the steeples of churches. In rural areas often settle in the chimneys. Willing to take the holes. Often set up a joint colony with the rooks. Rooks build their nests in the tops of trees, and jackdaws – in the hollows or under the roofs of garden buildings.
The nesting jackdaws appear already formed pairs. Throughout March, they’ll stay around from these places. But the construction of nests begin later crows and rooks, but the end of the first decade of April. Both partners together carrying a hollow first tube or thin dry twigs, and then wool, vegetable fibers, rags, and paper to shoot their tray.
In the first half of may in the nests you can find fresh eggs. There are often 5-6 pieces, sometimes more or less. They are light-bluish color, with sparse and small greenish-brown spots. The average egg size 36×26 mm. They are usually easy to distinguish from eggs of other corvids. After 18 days of incubation in the nest there are Chicks. Thrown out of the nests after hatching of eggs shell. Most likely, jackdaws, and other corvids, they can’t stand it. The Chicks remain in the nest for a month.
