Look, my feeder is just peanuts to the macho birds, anyway

It is a well-known fact that you cannot keep everyone happy all the time. Fortunately, we are all so different that it makes life more challenging and hence interesting.

So, when a friend challenged me about my attitude to crows, I was ready to listen but reserved the right to stick to my seemingly reprehensible behavior of chasing the crows out of my garden.

"Crow" genus Corvus or corvids is a broad and casual term to identify a number of large birds within the genus Corvus. In my case, rooks, jackdaws and magpies counted my garden as within their feeding range, which is apparently miles and miles.

As I haven't tagged any, I can't tell if the "local" crows around me are always the same ones.

I do know that after a big storm at the start of 2023, my trees suddenly became home to seven nests after their previous location, over a kilometer away, came down in the storm.

At least two new generations of rooks hatched in just a year from those nests, and as they overlook my garden it is not surprising the rooks keep turning up within sight of my windows.

The problem is that the magpies who inhabit some outbuildings have also now discovered that "the human" is putting out food in the front garden for the more delicate smaller birds, which need a bit of help in colder weather in finding food.

My friend, like me, an avid animal lover, thinks I shouldn't chase the crows away from the food meant for finches, robins, blackbirds, thrushes and tits.

She loves the crows because they happily pick through her horses' dung, spreading it across the ground, fertilizing it naturally.

They then move on to the dung heap she builds with dung mucked out from the stable, keeping it clear of infestations of beetles and flies so she does not need pesticides.

We have compromised. I will continue to keep the larger birds away from my feeders, ensuring the small birds can maintain numbers whatever the weather and she will drop a load of horse dung down onto empty land near my garden so the crows can feast on their preferred choice of food.

Crows are really too macho for seeds and peanuts anyway.

They are happier with meatier objects such as worms, beetles, bugs and field mice.

Georgina Noyce is an equestrian judge, and has a menagerie of adopted four-legged waifs and strays