Chough feeding time - on Islay, Hebrides

I must thank Eric Bignal, chough worker and farmer on Islay for sending me some images recently of choughs feeding on mealworms (a supplementary food he has started to provide to try and help boost the survival of immature birds). Eric was a bit sceptical at first but decided to give it a go. Here in one of the images chough are simply queing up, wing-quivering etc, as they wait expectantly for helpings of mealworms to be doled out from his bucket on a cold windy day. They are so used to him doing this now that they recognise his landrover coming and start to get exited! If individual chough are not particularly hungry, just like other corvids they simply stash some of the mealworms in the sandy soil to retrieve again some time later. One of Eric's images shows a single chough feeding on a mealworm (BH).