Not quite a "Clattering" ......

...... but a pair of jackdaws in the churchyard.
A 'clattering' is/was the collective noun for a group of jackdaws - a train of jackdaws can also be used.

A hard crop on this one as they were very skittish and I couldn't get all that close and I only had my 18-105 lens with me.

Info: Skip to the bottom if not really interested in folklore!!!!!!

In Ancient Greek folklore, a jackdaw can be caught with a dish of oil. A narcissistic creature, it falls in while looking at its own reflection.

In Aesop's Fables, the jackdaw embodies vanity in "The Bird in Borrowed Feathers" (also known as "The Vain Jackdaw"), in which it sought to become king of the birds adorned with feathers of other birds, but was shamed when they fell off.

Another fable highlights its stupidity as the jackdaw starves while waiting for figs on a fig tree to ripen.

An ancient Greek and Roman adage runs "The swans will sing when the jackdaws are silent", meaning that educated or wise people will speak only after the foolish have become quiet.

The mythical Princess Arne was bribed with gold by King Minos of Crete, and was punished for her greed by being transformed into an equally avaricious jackdaw, who still seeks shiny things.

The Roman poet Ovid described jackdaws as harbingers of rain in his poetic work Amores.

Pliny notes how the Thessalians, Illyrians, and Lemnians cherished jackdaws for destroying grasshoppers' eggs.

The Veneti are fabled to have bribed the jackdaws to spare their crops.

In some cultures, a jackdaw on the roof is said to predict a new arrival; alternatively, a jackdaw settling on the roof of a house or flying down a chimney is an omen of death, and coming across one is considered a bad omen.

A jackdaw standing on the vanes of a cathedral tower is said to foretell rain. The 12th century historian William of Malmesbury records the story of a woman who, upon hearing a jackdaw chattering "more loudly than usual," grew pale and became fearful of suffering a "dreadful calamity", and that "while yet speaking, the messenger of her misfortunes arrived".

Czech superstition formerly held that if jackdaws are seen quarrelling, war will follow and that jackdaws will not build nests at Sázava after being banished by Saint Procopius.

The jackdaw was considered sacred in Welsh folklore as it nested in church steeples - it was shunned by the Devil because of its choice of residence.

Nineteenth century belief in The Fens held that seeing a jackdaw on the way to a wedding was a good omen for a bride.

People born within the town walls of Conwy in north Wales called themselves the Jackdaw Society, after the jackdaws which live on the walls there. Formed in 1976, the society folded in 2011.

The jackdaw is featured on the Ukrainian town of Halych's ancient coat of arms, the town's name allegedly being derived from the East Slavic word for the bird.

In his 1979 work The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera notes that Franz Kafka's father, Hermann, had a sign in front of his shop with a jackdaw painted next to his name, since "kavka" means jackdaw in Czech.

The Ingoldsby Legends (1837) contains a poem by Richard Harris Barham named The Jackdaw of Rheims. At a banquet, while the cardinal is having his hands ceremoniously washed, his turquoise ring is stolen. Enraged, the cardinal puts a dreadful curse on the thief. To everybody's amazement, nobody present is affected by the curse, but a jackdaw flutters down, emaciated, bald, dishevelled and lame. It leads them to its nest in the belfry where the ring is discovered. The cardinal is delighted at the return of his ring and lifts the curse and, when some time later the jackdaw dies, canonises him, giving him the name "Jim Crow".


18/52 in my personal birdie challenge 2013



Thank you for all the lovely comments on my Blue Dawn yesterday :-))




NIKON D90 : f/5.6 : 1/320" : 105mm : ISO 400