![]() ![]() She is clearly besotted with Chicken, as she has been over the years besotted with a magpie called Spike and other birds who have shared her life, although none as fully as Chicken.Ĭorvus, however, is not just a book about living with a rook. Bird droppings on carpets and floors, bits of food cached under rugs, inside cushions and "posted" between the laths of a hole in the kitchen wall (a favourite place) are all accepted philosophically by Woolfson. The learning experiences of bird and humans in this shared life have been mutual and for the humans, says Woolfson, continually fascinating. Chicken was quick to establish a place for herself in the family hierarchy, acknowledging (sometimes) the "parental authority" of Esther and her husband David and maintaining a sort of sibling rivalry with their two daughters. She has the run of most of the Woolfsons' home and she has her own "shanty-house" in Esther Woolfson's study, where she sleeps, bathes, roosts and preens and from which she can come and go as she wishes. So, Woolfson and Chicken began a sixteen-year relationship which was still continuing when this book was written.Ĭhicken is not your usual caged, tamed bird. was quickly re-interpreted as minced meat, eggs and chopped nuts. Woolfson's first task was to discover what she ate, but the recommended diet of rodents, chicks, grasshoppers, beetles etc. ![]() ![]() Madam Chickeboumskaya (to give Chicken her full title) arrived unexpectedly in the family as an unfledged infant bird, beak agape, ready for food. ![]() Esther Woolfson shares her home with a rook named Chicken. ![]()
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