King Solomon's Ring Read online

  Many drops wear out the stone. The attacks of Rightred lost gradually in intensity, Bluegold ceased to object to the bilateral attentions, and one day I noticed that things had reached the following pass. Bluegold was sitting still, letting Rightred tickle the back of his head. On the other side, Leftgreen proceeded to do the same thing. Then, for some reason, Rightred stopped scratching and flew away. The big male opened his eyes and beheld Leftgreen on his other side. But did he peck her? Did he drive her away? No! Pensively turning his head, he deliberately offered to Leftgreen the coveted part of the nape of his neck! Then his eyes closed again.

  From now on, Leftgreen gained rapidly in his favour. A few days later, I saw that he was feeding her, regularly and tenderly, though, to be sure, in the absence of Rightred: not that he was consciously doing this behind the back of his “rightful” bride—to believe this would be to over-rate the mental capacity of the jackdaw. Had Rightred been present, she would undoubtedly have received the delicacy, but because she was not, the other obtained it. My friend A. F. J. Portieje observed similar behaviour in mute swans. An old, married swan male furiously expelled a strange female, who came close to the nest where his wife was sitting and made him proposals of love. But on the very same day he was seen to meet this new female, remote from his wife and his nest, on the other side of the lake, and to succumb to her temptations without further ado. Here, too, a human parallel can be found, but here again it is erroneous. In the precincts of his nest, the male swan is concerned primarily with the defence of his territory, and he sees in every strange member of his species, whether it be male or female, only the intruder. Away from his nest territory where all trespassers must be prosecuted, he is not thus preoccupied, and is, therefore, able to recognize the desirable female in the person of the newcomer.

  The surer Leftgreen became of the male, the more impudent she became towards Rightred. No longer did she flee her rival, and there were sometimes duels between the two females. Strange was the behaviour of Bluegold in this dilemma. Whereas normally he had bravely supported his wife in any quarrels with other members of the colony, now he was obviously in conflict with himself. He certainly threatened Leftgreen, but never more took action against her. Indeed, I once saw him make slight threatening gestures towards Rightred, and his inhibitions and embarrassment in this situation were often quite apparent.

  The end of this romance was sudden and dramatic. One fine day Bluegold had disappeared, and with him—Leftgreen! I could not assume that these two mature and experienced birds had met with an accident at the same moment; doubtless they had flown away together. Conflicting emotions are certainly just as tormenting to animals as to human beings, and of this I will speak later; and I cannot exclude the possibility that it was these irreconcilable sentiments that impelled the male jackdaw to leave the colony.

  I have never known an occurrence of this type in older nesting couples and I do not think that such a thing ever happens. All the jackdaw nesting pairs that I was able to observe for any length of time remained true to each other to the day of their death. Nevertheless, widows and widowers remarry without demur, as soon as they find a suitable partner, though this is not so easy for old and high-caste females. Greylag geese never remarry and this is a subject which I have treated in my book about these birds.

  In their second year jackdaws become capable of reproduction. In reality, they probably are so in their second autumn, immediately after their first full moult in which not only their body plumage, but also the large flight feathers of their wings and tail are renewed. After this moult, on fine autumn days, the birds are obviously in a mood for sexual activity, and are especially inclined to seek nesting cavities. The abovementioned “zick, zick” can be heard continuously from all sides. When the weather becomes cooler, this post-moulting sexual mood fades out again, but remains latent, and, on warm winter days, little zick zick concerts sometimes ring through the chimneys into the rooms below. In February and March the matter becomes serious and the “zick-zick” hardly ever ceases during the hours of daylight.

  At this time, another ceremony is often performed which is quite the most interesting in the whole social life of the jackdaws. In the last days of March when the zicking has reached its height, the concert swells, in some niche in the wall, to an unprecedented volume. At the same time, it alters its timbre, becomes deeper and fuller and sounds, from now on, more like a “yip, yip, yip” emitted in an ever increasing succession of rapid staccato notes which, towards the end of the strophe, reaches a pitch of frenzy. Simultaneously, excited jackdaws rush in from all sides towards this niche and, with ruffled feathers and their best threatening attitudes, join in the yipping concert.

  And what does all this mean? It took me quite a time to find out: it represents neither more nor less than communal action against a social delinquent! In order fully to understand this collective reaction, which is purely instinctive, we must look further into it.

  In general, a jackdaw zicking in its nesting cavity will not lightly be attacked, as the aggressor will inevitably be at a disadvantage. Now the jackdaw has two separate ways of threatening, as distinct in their form as in their meaning: should the quarrel concern, exclusively a social rank dispute, the rivals threaten each other by drawing themselves up to their full height and flattening their feathers. This attitude implies the intention of flying upwards and onto the back of the adversary. It is the forerunner of that method of fighting, common also to cocks and many other birds, in which the partners fly upwards, locked in fight, each clawing and striking at his opponent, endeavouring to overcome him and to throw him over on his back. The second threatening attitude is exactly the opposite. The bird ducks, drawing low his head and neck, to form a curious “cat’s back”, emphasized by the ruffling of his back feathers. The tail is drawn sideways toward the opponent and spread into a fan. While in the first threatening attitude the bird tries to appear as tall as possible, in this, the second one, he makes himself as bulky as he can. The first attitude means, “If you don’t make room, I shall attack you flying”, while the second implies “Here where I sit I will fight to the last, for I shall not cede one inch!” A bird of high rank which approaches a subordinate, with the intention of driving him from a particular place, generally retires if the latter assumes the second threatening attitude. Only if the aggressor himself sets store by this spot, for example with a view to a nesting site, does he proceed to further action. In this case, he also assumes the second attitude. And so the two squat for a long while, shoulder to shoulder, each watching the other with grim intensity. They hardly ever come to blows but, still squatting in the same place and keeping their distance, aim fast and furious but totally ineffective pecks at each other. The sharp expulsion of breath and the snapping of the beak is distinctly audible at each peck. The result of such quarrels is always a question of who can hold out the longest.

  The whole zicking ceremony is bound up inseparably with the second attitude of threatening, the jackdaw being quite unable to utter either its “zick, zick” or its “yip, yip” in any other position. In the jackdaw, as in all animals which mark out territories, the boundary between the “possessions” of two rivals is determined by the fact that any individual will fight much more furiously when near its home, than when it is on foreign ground. Therefore a jackdaw zicking in its own rightful nesting cavity has from the start, a very appreciable advantage over every intruder, and this superiority, as a rule, more than outweighs any difference in strength and rank that might exist between fellow members of the colony.

  However, owing to the keen competition for the possession of serviceable nest cavities, it sometimes happens that a very strong bird attacks a very much weaker one in its nesting cavity and assaults it unmercifully. In this eventuality, what I have called the “yip-reaction” comes into play. The zicking of the outraged householder increases at first tremendously and then gradually gives place to a yipping. If his wife is not already at hand to assist, she now comes rushing up
with ruffled feathers, joins in the yipping and attacks the peacebreaker. Should the latter not retreat instantly the incredible happens: loudly yipping, all the jackdaws within earshot storm the threatened nest cavity and the original battle disappears in a solid mass of jackdaws, in an increasing paroxysm of rage, a crescendo, accelerando and fortissimo of general yipping. After thus forcefully discharging their excitement, the birds disperse soberly; only the nest owners can still be heard quietly zicking in their once more peaceful home.

  The congregation of a number of jackdaws is usually enough to terminate the fight, particularly since the original aggressor participates in the yipping! This might seem to an observer, who attributed to the bird human qualities, that the cunning invader wished to divert suspicion from himself by crying “stop thief”. In reality, however, the aggressor, dragged willy-nilly into the yipping reaction, does not even know that he is the cause of the tumult. And so, yipping, he turns in all directions as though he, too, were seeking the culprit, and, strangely enough, he is doing so in all sincerity.

  I have often seen cases, however, where the aggressor was very definitely recognized by the advancing members of the colony, and was thoroughly thrashed by them if he persisted in his attack. In 1928, the real despot of the jackdaw colony was a saucy magpie whom I had reared together with the jackdaws. The magpie far surpasses the jackdaw in fighting qualities and, unlike it, is a distinctly non-social bird and quite devoid of the finely adjusted social drives and inhibitions which make the jackdaw so appealing to us. So this feathered rascal, lacking any sense of propriety, soon became the same disturbing element in the jackdaw colony as the inveterate criminal in a civilized human society. Time and again this piebald bully forced his way into the nesting cavities of different jackdaw couples and incited an indignant yipping. Although the magpie has no organ for the yipping reaction of the jackdaws and pursued his object undaunted, he was nevertheless forcefully brought to his senses by the mass attack of the jackdaws, who taught him, by bitter experience, to leave their nests alone. Thus, contrary to my earnest fears, eggs and young came off unscathed.

  It is primarily the old, strong, high-ranking males that play the most important role in the yipping and rattling reactions. In another way also they safeguard the welfare of the community. In autumn 1929 a huge flock of migrating jackdaws and rooks, all in all about two hundred, descended on the fields in the immediate neighbourhood of our house. And all my young jackdaws of that year and the previous one got themselves inextricably mixed up with these strangers. Only my few old birds stayed at home. I regarded this occurrence as an absolute catastrophe and visualized my work of two years flying away beyond recall. I knew only too well how strong an attraction a migrating flock can exert upon young jackdaws, who, intoxicated by the sight of a myriad ebony wings, seem compelled to fly with them; and, had it not been for Goldgreen and Bluegold, the results of my hard labour would have gone with the wind (or rather, against it, since jackdaws prefer to fly in that direction). These two old males, the only ones of their age in the colony, flew incessantly backwards and forwards between house and field, and there they did something so incredible that I should be inclined to doubt it myself as I write, had the same type of activity not frequently been witnessed and even experimentally proved by myself and my workers. Each of the two patriarchs sought, from out of the crowd, a single one of our own young birds and fetched it home in a most peculiar manner. They induced it to take wing by a very special manoeuvre which jackdaw parents also practise with their children when enticing them from some dangerous place. The parent bird flies, from behind, low over the back of the young one and, the moment he is immediately above him, he executes a quick sideways wobbling movement with his closely folded tail, which ceremony impels the sitting bird to “follow the leader” with a reflex-like certainty. This feat being achieved, the old males resumed their homeward flight, ever casting backward glances to see if their charges were still following. We have already seen how Jock also used this method in guiding her wards.

  During the whole procedure, Goldgreen and Bluegold uttered continuously a significant call note, clearly distinguishable from the usual short, light flight-call by the drawn-out length of its dark, muffled tone. While the ordinary flying-call sounds like a high “Kia, Kia”, this second note can be expressed by a “Kiaw, Kiaw”. I was conscious at once that I had already heard this cry, but only now was its meaning brought home to me.

  The two male jackdaws worked with a feverish haste; well-trained sheepdogs, who separate and round up their own sheep from a large flock, could not have shown a keener efficiency. They worked without pause, well into the dusk, when jackdaws have normally long since sought their perches. Theirs was no easy task, for, no sooner had they coaxed a contingent of young jackdaws into their home, than these immediately flew off to rejoin the flock on the meadow: for every ten birds that were laboriously recaptured, nine escaped again. But late in the evening, when the wandering tribe moved onward, I found with a deep sigh of relief that, of our many young jackdaws, only two were missing.

  Impressed by this episode, I began to investigate more thoroughly the different meanings of “Kia” and “Kiaw”. They were soon clear to me: both calls denote “Fly with me!” But whereas the jackdaw calls “Kia” when it is in the mood for flying abroad, it cries “Kiaw” to express a homeward-bound intention. I had always noticed that migrating flocks of jackdaws cried differently, more shrilly than my birds, and I now know the reason why. Far from home, with all the ties of the “homing instinct” temporarily severed, the motivation for the “Kiaw” call is absent. Under these conditions, only the wander-call “Kia” is heard. In this connexion, it would be interesting to ascertain whether the “Kiaw”-sound is ever heard in the spring in flocks migrating back to their breeding colonies. What I heard from my own jackdaw flock was invariably a mixture of both notes because, within the precincts of the colony, a certain homeward-bound tendency was never entirely lacking, even in winter.

  Despite the verbal interpretation “Fly with me”, it must be stressed that these call-notes are purely indicative of the mood of the bird in question and are in no way a conscious command. But these completely unintentional expressions of individual feeling are of as highly infectious a nature as yawning in human beings. It is this mutual mood-infection which ensures that all the jackdaws finally act concertedly. Thus, far from being determined by the authority of an autocratic leader, the activities of flocks of birds, herds or packs of animals, and even schools of fishes, are decided by a process very similar to the democratic system of voting. This is the reason why the behaviour of a flock of jackdaws under certain circumstances shows a regrettable lack of unison. This interaction of moods may sometimes continue for a surprisingly long period, thus emphasizing the birds’ utter inability to come to a decision: this would involve the aptitude to concentrate on one particular motive by consciously subjugating all other present impulses: but this faculty is an attribute only of man and, to a much lesser extent, some of the more highly intelligent mammals. It makes a human observer positively nervy to watch such a jackdaw flock torn hither and thither between “Kia” and “Kiaw” calls, for half hours on end. There sits the flock, in the middle of a field, some miles away from home; it has relinquished its quest for food, so the birds will soon be flying home, “soon” meaning of course a jackdaw’s somewhat elastic idea of that conception of time. At last, a few birds—usually old, strongly reactive ones—take off, emitting “Kiaw” cries and thereby provoking the whole flock to leave the ground with them; but no sooner are they in the air than it becomes evident that many members of the flock are still in “Kia”-mood. In a babel of “Kia” and “Kiaw” cries, the flock circles and eventually lands again, this time on a field perhaps further still from home. This is repeated a dozen times, then very gradually the “Kiaw”-factor becomes preponderant, gains ascendancy and finally sweeps all before it with the voracity of an avalanche.

  The “Kiaw”-reaction c
ertainly plays an overwhelmingly large role in maintaining the integrity of the colony. I have already related how, on one occasion, it preserved mine from ruin and, later on, it did so again in an entirely different manner. Some years after its establishment, my jackdaw colony was struck by a catastrophe whose cause remains obscure to this day.

  In order to avoid the inevitable losses of winter migration, I kept the birds confined to the aviary from November to February and paid an assistant, who was said to be conscientious, to look after them, as I was living at this time in Vienna. One day all the birds had gone! The wire of the cage had a hole in it, possibly caused by the wind, two jackdaws were found dead and the rest had disappeared. Perhaps a marten had got in, but I never found out. Keepers of free-living animals become accustomed to all sorts of set-backs, but this loss was perhaps “the most unkindest cut of all” that my tireless efforts in animal rearing ever received. But it brought some good withal, in the form of some observations which would otherwise never have been possible. This luck began with the sudden reappearance of one bird after the space of three days: it was Redgold, the ex-queen, the first jackdaw who had hatched and brought up her young in Altenberg.