An apparently resident Nordic Jackdaw at Craigmillar in Edinburgh has previously featured on this blog, and Geoff's, so when at Stockholm airport this week I was on the look-out for this species to see what they look like on home territory. Spotted a few on the slushy pavement outside Arlanda terminal 4 but they flew off before I emerged, so spent 20 minutes trudging round seeing nothing more than a Hoodie and a Magpie. All of a sudden they were back and appreciated the remains of my breakfast, half a slice of black bread - thereby managed to get some photos of two birds with just a hint of a collar, though they seemed grey enough given the light. Two others had slightly more marked collars, none very pronounced though. Stockholm ought to be well into the range of monedula but clearly they can vary.
Second individual:
Have previously refered to the Offereins papers (1, 2) but also found these reports on a Pembrokeshire blog, including a resident breeder there which is clearly "Nordic". Despite the very small sample from Sweden, I feel more comfortable now about accepting that the Craigmillar bird is the real deal, I'm less confident about speculating on origins, instinctively I feel that rather than an individual wintering bird pairing and thus getting stuck in the "wrong" country it has to be more likely that our own resident population includes small numbers of birds matching this appearance?
On the other hand, no doubts about the purity of the Hoodies here, with no hint of dark in undertail coverts:
My trip also took me to Luleå at the head of the Baltic but in the short daylight the only additional species seen was Raven!
Nice corvids Stephen. The jackdaw shots are particularly interesting given the similarity of the Craigmillar bird. Interesting links as well. Have had a couple of looks for it again recently but no luck. Geoff
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