Patrick Logue: In the pecking order of my garden, crows are superior

My dad made us a bird table for Christmas, and it has taken pride of place in our small back garden ever since. Over the winter, the birds came to rely on it for survival, with regular offerings keeping them fat and warm during the frost and occasional sleet shower blowing in off the Louth coast. During the warmer months of spring and summer, they began using the table’s gifts to fuel their gluttonous ways.

We have developed quite a refined ecosystem in the back garden of Chez Logue. Once meals inside the house are finished, the leftovers are divided into various piles: one for tomorrow’s Tupperware, one for the hairy mutt, one for the birds and one for the bin. The dog’s pile is weighted with meat, fish, gravy, dairy products and anything that has fallen on to the floor or has passed its use-by date. For devilment, we sometimes hide a piece of fruit in the middle of a mound of leftover creamy mashed potatoes to see if he can find it before wolfing down everything whole. The dog eats quickly in case the imaginary suburban predators try to take his food away. They lurk in a suburban dog’s mind. Sometimes you’ll find a lonely strawberry cast aside with every inch of butter and gravy having been sucked off it.

For the birds

The pile for the birds has everything else that has been cooked for human consumption but not eaten; maybe we made too much or maybe a child has turned his ungrateful nose up at what has been served. We usually do not include broccoli as the birds tend to turn their little beaks up at it. And it a superfood.

By the time dinner is over, the back garden has usually been darkened by the presence of the crows. They’re perched on the fence that divides our house from next door and on top of the gable end of the house that peers over the end of our garden, silhouetted against the bright but cloudy Irish sky. Impatiently they give out the odd “caw, caw”: Caw bhfuil mo dhinnéar, a Phádraig? Caw bhfuil sé?

Once the dog is catered for and the bird table has been filled up, the meal commences. Crows swoop down once the humans have disappeared and start feasting. The smaller ones – finches, starlings, blackbirds and the like – hang around at the bottom of the bird table and eat what drops on the ground. They wait their turn.

I have come to admire the birds of the garden and appreciate the way they help cut waste charges, and the way they knock along with each other and the dog, which would just as easily look past the mashed potatoes and gobble up a juicy bird feathers and all. He used to chase them, and still chases the magpies. He hates magpies as much as the siren of the ice-cream van when it pulls into the estate. But he seems to have developed a grudging respect for the crows since the bird table arrived.

Superior to seagulls

Crows are far superior birds to seagulls. If gulls were humans they would spit on the ground. They would shout at people and mug them as they go about their businesses. They would hold up signs quoting people’s dead mothers. They are always causing trouble and screeching about a storm coming.

David Cameron recently called for a “national conversation” about gulls after a Yorkshire terrier and a pet tortoise were snatched, presumed eaten. Closer to home we have had reports of giant seagulls attacking and killing mature ewes in south and west Kerry, and, in a bizarre attack, a motorcyclist on the road between Waterville and Cahersiveen was swooped on by the birds. We are not sure if he had food on board or not.

As we sat around and discussed this issue (and other important matters of state) in The Irish Times recently, it quickly emerged that many people have a seagull-related tale of woe to tell. One colleague in the newsroom confessed that his expensive wristwatch had been stolen by a seagull as he and his wife prepared to dive off a boat while on holidays in Croatia. Another said her boyfriend was attacked in Dublin by three seagulls, which relieved him of a doughnut. Another had half a Marks and Spencer ham sandwich taken during a recent lunch break. I bumped into somebody from the advertising department who informed those of us sharing the lift that a seagull had swooped down and taken the lunch of an Irish Times staff member who was enjoying the sunshine on our rooftop.

Many have a seagull story but not one about crows, which have maintained their integrity, in my eyes at least. They are intelligent, hard-working and mannerly, and if you see one up close they are actually rather beautiful.

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• Michael Harding is on leave