Jack's Drinking Hole

I have a soft spot for jackdaws. We had a pet one, Socrates, for about fifteen years. He fell down the chimney in the school where my dad taught when he was just a chick, and by the time he was fledged, he was too used to people - and cats - to release into the wild. Some of the cats used to drape themselves over the top of his cage. His favourite food was mashed hardboiled egg. For a few weeks one summer we had a young seagull, Gulliver, who was brought to us by one of Dad's students, with a broken wing. He stayed in a large cage in the garden, living happily on a diet of tinned sardines, and never got all that tame, so releasing him back on the beach where he was found was no problem once his wing had healed up.
Today was such a bright, sunny (and frosty) day that when I walked down to get the paper and vegetables in the morning, I took my big camera, and spotted this jackdaw up in the tree. While I watched, he flew down to the bole of the tree, and started drinking away from some water which had gathered in a little hollow.
Then we went to the library - by a lovely coincidence someone who responded to my Freecycle offer of a bag of wool runs a toddler group there on Saturday mornings, and our books were due for returning by today at the latest.