246 CATALOGUE OF BIRDS. 



Its habitat abroad — " South of the Arctic circle 

 in Scandinavia the Jay is found throughout the 

 suitable wooded portions of Europe down to the 

 Mediterranean and Black Seas" (H.S.) 



CASE 52. 



THE CHOUGH 

 Order, Passeres. Family, Corvid(2. 



This handsome species, allied to the Jackdaw, is, 

 I very much regret to say, not nearly so plentiful as 

 it used to be in years gone by. 



Mr. W. H. Hudson, as I gather from his book, 

 seems to attribute its diminishing numbers and now 

 very limited distribution over our islands, to persecu- 

 tion of some sort or other, the inference being '}nan. 

 He says, "Unless strong measures to secure its pro- 

 tection be at once taken, its eventual extinction in 

 this country must be regarded as merely a question 

 of time." Howard Saunders, on the other hand, 

 assigns quite a different cause for the scarcity of the 

 Chough nowadays, which he attributes to its being 

 a very local bird, as well as a very capricious species ; 

 localities formerly inhabited by it being sometimes 

 abandoned without any assignable reason. In 1887, 

 Howard Saunders found that it had almost dis- 

 appeared from Lundy Island, where it used to be 

 abundant, but this was due to the ravages of the 

 Peregrine Falcon, which, when Pigeons are scarce, 

 finds the Chough a very good substitute. 



