Walnut Thieves
We have two walnut trees in the cottage garden, and although they do not bear a heavy crop they have a fair number of huts on them in the season. For some reason no one ever harvests the crop. So many other things have to be done at that time that when the nuts are thought about, after grapes have been picked and apples gathered, they have all mysteriously disappeared. I could name some of the culprits. The spotted woodpecker takes his share, but I suspect that he is aided by the jackdaws, for I find shells beneath favourite perching places of these birds, at the foot of hen-run posts and along the drystone wall. The evidence is out of sight until early in the new year when, the vegetation having died and rotted away, the debris of half-shells is exposed. I don't blame the claws for their taste for a ripe walnut. My attitude to them changed after a friend was kind enough to send me Lorenz's King Solomon's Ring, but, at the same time, I wish they would take the shells a little farther away. It is not pleasant to be reminded of things left undone in autumn, and, however good our intentions, those walnuts never get harvested, but remaki as an offering to the woodpecker and the jackdaws, who take them by stealth and leave us oblivious to our loss until spring is almost here.
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