Having been brought up in rural Shropshire, I normally wouldn’t have paid a lot of attention to corvids when I lived there.
However, things are different now I’m an inner city resident and appreciate all the birdlife I see.
As regards corvids specifically, magpies and carrion crows seem to be the most numerous. Indeed, magpies nested in the large ash tree in the ‘pocket park‘ around the corner a couple of years ago.
Furthermore, jays, those most colourful of British resident corvids, are not unknown in Easton, whilst sightings of ravens are rarer (posts passim).
Indeed, the only members of the resident 8 strong British corvid family that I’ve not seen locally over the years are the chough (which tends to prefer sea cliffs as habitat. Ed.) and hooded crow, which is more readily found found in N and W Scotland, N Ireland and on the Isle of Man as a replacement for the carrion crow.
Monday was a lovely sunny day and returning from my constitutional, I was passing down Croydon Street when I noticed a crow alight in a nest in a roadside sycamore tree. A crow’s nest is best described as a roughly crafted collection of sticks in the fork of a tree. Most corvids are not builders of complicated or artistic-looking nests.
As I was attempting to get a halfway decent shot of the nest, the other bird in the pair turned up with fresh nest material in its beak. It can be seen in the picture below. Apologies for the wobbly camera work: I was leaning back and pointing the camera straight up at arm’s length.
Update: there’s also a crow’s next in a tree in the pocket park on Chaplin Road.