CROWS pecking at a church roof have inspired a community-wide competition to find the best scarecrow.

Churchgoers at the Holy Family Church in Blackbird Leys, Oxford, want to hold the estate’s first scarecrow competition to raise money to fix the roof.

They are calling on families, businesses and community groups to rummage through their unwanted clothes and build their own scarecrow.

Crows are notorious in more rural areas for gorging on farmers’ crops, but it seems they are now making a nuisance of themselves in the city.

Organiser the Rev Adam Stevenson, the free church minister, said creations could be displayed in front gardens, on walls or outside community buildings before judges decide which is the best.

He said: “The aim is for the church to organise something that is community-focused and that can bring Blackbird Leys together.

“The day is about everyone having fun, and if it does raise any money then it will help pay for the church roof.

“It’s a 1960s building and it needs some repairs, partly through destruction by crows which have been pecking at it. It does leak, which has become a problem.”

It is hoped money will be raised by selling a map with a scarecrow trail around the estate.

Reg Curnock, secretary of the local allotments association, Cyril Sellar, a local farmer who is supplying the straw, and Andrew Smith, MP for East Oxford, will judge the competition on June 26. For more information, call Mr Stevenson on 01865 714163.