SPORTING ANSWERS

Make most of rook flavours

GAMECOOKING

Q How should we prepare rook for cooking? Do you have any suggestions for recipes we could try? We are a bit sick of the traditional rook pie.

A I am a fan of eating rook — and jackdaws — but I do not limit this only to branchers in the spring.

I used to live by a dairy farm or two before I moved to Scotland and every spring I would decoy rooks and jackdaws over the freshly cut silage fields as they came to forage for the crippled insect life left behind by the mower and forager.

I suggest that you divide the shot birds by age, then pluck and roast the branchers a little like whole young pigeon. The older ones you can hang for a day or two, then breast