WE THRILL to the new, to the exotic, to the extraordinary: we grow blind to the quotidian, the ambient, the normal. No doubt there is an evolutionary explanation for this: a survival mechanism that goes back to the dawn of humankind, when to be unaware of a change in the normal patterns could be fatal.

A hyper-awareness of the unusual is the best way to stay alive in challenging circumstances, but it is not the best way to understand the world we live in. If you don’t get a handle on the ordinary, you will never understand the exceptional. Which brings me to crows. In the recent wild, wintry and windy weather, crows have taken centre stage: and are often ignored. Just another black bird.

Jackdaws are the smallest commonly seen black crows: and helpfully, they will announce their identity by saying “jack” in a loud, clear voices. And they love the big winds. They are junkies for wind.

One of the great sights of British birdwatching — if you can prevent your eyes from searching for the exotic — is a jackdaw or two messing about on a windy day.

They ride the wind as it were the big wheel at a funfair, whizzing giddily up to the top and tumbling down in the far side in an untidy mop of feathers. A group of them together seem to be playing a game called “first one to flap is a sparrow”: making huge sweeps, circles and arabesques by means of subtle alterations of the surface of the wing.

It doesn’t look sleek and accomplished, the way a kestrel banks and wheels on a windy day: rather, it is impetuous, infectiously cheerful, and it seems to be beckon onlookers to come and join in.

Why do they do it? This is a question I have never heard satisfactorily answered. What on earth is the evolutionary purpose of these mad aerial cartwheels? It doesn’t bring any food, it doesn’t bring any sex, because it’s the wrong time of year. No doubt it cements a certain group solidarity, but that would seem to be a bonus rather than the fundamental purpose.

It doesn’t use much energy, because there is so little flapping involved. It seems to me to be nothing more or less than play: a delight in the day, a delight in their own mastery, and a thrilling enjoyment of testing your own body against the wildness of the world. Human beings go surfing: so do jackdaws. Perhaps fun — perhaps sport — is not, after all, a human invention.

• I HAVE always been a great advocate of boars, if only out of self-protection. I have been reading, in the indispensable British Wildlife magazine, about the growing populations of wild boars in this country. People have been getting very sniffy about the reintroduction of beavers, but the boars are back in this country and it looks as if we are stuck with them.

  Four notable breeding populations already exist, established by escapees from boar farms and slaughterhouses. The biggest group is in Kent and East Sussex, where there are reckoned to be more than 100, with a second group in Dorset that is getting up to the 100 mark. Near Ross-on-Wye 30 have been seen together and in the Forest of Dean no more than 10, but that included a sow and piglets.

  The natural reaction is to celebrate. This is all good clean fun, and a fine demonstration of the resilience of wildlife, doing its stuff wild and unregulated. Reintroductions are often difficult: one of Britain’s lost wildlife treasures has simply come swaggering back under its own steam.

  Inevitably, though, there are complications. These are big, alarming and occasionally dangerous animals that can damage farmland and other managed environments. The more serious problem is that wild animals could carry diseases to domestic stock, which brings up all sort of economic questions.

  The reverse side of the coin is that government is committed to the reintroduction of lost native species, and a climbdown from such a stance would hardly look well. There are three options: doing nothing, managing the wild herds and wiping them out. The last possibility is extremely difficult and expensive, and may well not even be possible.

  However, the beasts are out there now. Henry III ate — with some considerable help, one imagines — 300 boar at the great Christmas feast of 1251, but after that the records get fewer, and it is probable that the last free-living wild swine were killed in 1260. There is joy, then, in this historic reversal: a hint of the wild fighting back.

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