Oh no- not another jackdaw!!

  Well, if ever a week was trying to tell us to have birdproof cowls on our chimneys it was this one..

  We have had three (yes, really!) jackdaws stuck inside our chimney this week. 

  The first one was on Monday, through Tuesday. It was slithering about in a full-height chimney which terminated at the bottom in a wood burning stove. We kept hearing jackdaws calling excitedly, and, rather pitifully, several times saw a group of jackdaws peering down the chimney pot calling. 

  We could hear it gradually making its way down the chimney throughout Monday. As it got lower, twice I put one of those things up the chimney that look like feather dusters but aren't- I have a pink leopard print one with an extending handle that I got for Christmas- at last, an opportunity to use it!! I was trying to gently dislodge it so we could catch it- we'd lined the fireplace with cushions and bubble wrap for a soft landing.

   Twice as the bird slithered further and further down the chimney, I managed to grab it by putting my arm up the chimney, but each time it got away from me and scrabbled back up the chimney. 

  We spoke to the RSPCA, hoping that they might have some chimney sweeping brushes that they could gently put up the chimney to help get the jackdaw out the top. They didn't seem at all sure that they possessed such things (they only cost about £30.00 from Amazon..), and because of their triage system we weren't actually able to talk to the local inspector to find out. 

  We spoke to a local chimney sweep who quoted £80.00 to come and sweep the chimney- and get the bird out in the process. It seemed a lot of money, as we didn't actually want our chimney swept, so, instead we went and  bought 48 feet of  plastic piping (why did we think our house was so tall?) and fastened the pieces together with duck tape, and attached some more of those things that aren't feather dusters, so that the end of the piping would be soft.

  By the time we were ready to put the pipe up the chimney, we hadn't heard anything for a while, not since a bout of very intense scrabbling and wingflapping, so we half wondered if the jackdaw had got itself out the top of the chimney.

  By the time the pipe waved cheerily out the top of the chimney pot we realised that the jackdaw was gone. It had cost us over £50.00 in piping and duct tape and fluffy dusters, but it was worth it to know that the jackdaw was safely out because by the second day we were getting a bit worried about it having been without food and, especially, water for so long.

    Yesterday morning something woke me at 6.30. I lay there hearing strange scratching noises accompanied by loud jackdaw calls again. I went outside and looked up at the roof and, once again. there were jackdaws clustered on one of the chimney pots looking down and chattering and calling excitedly. 

  This was potentially much worse because the chimney it was inside was one that led to a bedroom fireplace which was bricked up and plastered over. We went back to the DIY barn in the town a few miles away, and bought a chisel- and then came back and started removing plaster until we had uncovered one brick in the chimney breast. Over two hours later, we were through and had a fist-sized hole in our chimney breast- but oddly, although we had heard scrabbling and rustling from the jackdaw throughout, it didn't seem to be responding to us breaking through into the chimney. When we realised that rubble that we were breaking off was appearing in the fireplace in the living room it dawned on us that we'd just bashed a hole in the wrong side of the chimney!

  The chimney was divided into two internally, with half leading from the woodburning stove in the living room (the one that the jackdaw was in on Tuesday), while the other half lead to the sealed off bedroom fireplace. Today's jackdaw was, of course, stuck in the sealed up chimney, and we'd just broken through into the wrong side of our chimney, which was why the bird wasn't reacting to that at all- it couldn't see us, as it was in the other half of the chimney. D'oh!

   So, at 4 o' clock in the afternoon we started scraping plaster off another patch on the right hand side of the chimney breast, this time! This was much harder because the brick was much harder and less crumbly than the other side, but an hour and a half later we were through. 

  The chimney was absolutely full of twigs from old nests- the pile was two or three feet deep, which explained why the jackdaw had sounded so high up as we were working. We had to pull out all the twigs  which we found a bit nerve-wracking because we were terrified that we'd find ourselves hauling out dead birds in amongst the twigs..I'm very comfortable handling birds- we've had a lot of rescued birds over the years- but I wasn't comfortable at the thought of encountering a dead one in amongst the twigs.

   As the pile of twigs in our bin bag grew bigger and the pile in the chimney grew smaller we could hear the jackdaw slithering towards us until it was standing on the floor of the fireplace just inside the hole we'd made.

   It took a few minutes for me to get a good enough hold of it to be able to gently ease it through the hole with its wings held close to its side and by then it had a very firm hold of my finger with its beak. It was slightly painful, but I've been bitten by crows and jackdaws don't really even register on the scale!

  The jackdaw did look slightly the worse for wear as it had scraped the edge of it's wing; birds have higher blood pressure than ours, I believe, and they do bleed quite heavily. It also had obviously got some grit or soot in its eyes (we had too, by then!), and was blinking and sliding its eye membranes across. We also noticed that in the time it had been in the chimney it had worn its nails right down. 

  We had been working as hard as we could to get it out of the chimney before dusk; it looked a bit stressed but otherwise all right, so we bathed its eyes quickly, gave it a drink, cleaned up its wound and gave it some homeopathic Arnica 30c. Then we took it outside and as it started really struggling, obviously wanting to go, we released it. We watched it circle round and fly away across the fields, all feeling a bit tired but very proud.

  THEN I woke up this morning, and as I woke and heard excited jackdaws calling I just knew that we had yet another jackdaw to deal with. As I went into the room where we had been working yesterday I saw a jackdaw standing inside the chimney and peering out into the room through the hole we'd made yesterday.

  When I went over, it disappeared back inside the chimney and managed to scramble up a way. I gently dislodged it and it landed on my hand; after a small amount of very gentle tussling in a very confined space, i managed to ease it out as I pulled my hand out again, cupped round the bird. It landed beside me, I picked it up, had a quick look at it, gave it some Arnica and popped it out through the window.

  We have a lot of experience with birds; we used to work in an animal shelter and have looked after lots of rescued birds, and for years we had rescued, non-releasable jackdaws and crows living with us. They are amazing, beautiful birds, and we still miss them.
  The children have been absolutely fascinated by the jackdaw they saw yesterday; it's made a big impression on them, and now they are all not-so-secretly hoping that another falls down the chimney- not that they would wish one to be hurt- they just want to get a close look at another jackdaw!  The children really, really love animals and being around them but we really believe in animals being wild and free, if at all possible, so we don't go to zoos.  I'd like to think, though,  that we didn't have to wait until an animal falls down our chimney before we get a chance to be around some other animals! We have a tour of a local animal shelter arranged in the next few days, so that should be interesting.

    Homeopathic Arnica has traditionally been used for many, many kinds of shock and physical trauma; it's really a remedy that everyone could usefully carry around with them because you just never know when you might need it, or come across someone else who needs it.
   We are fully-qualified, experienced homeopathic practitioners and we will be selling a range of vegan homeopathic remedies through our shop at  veganation.co.uk with some useful information about homeopathy, so if you are interested, you know what to do!
    After all, sometimes it's not just Santa who comes down the chimney..