CROWS 207 



abandon the enterprise on finding that the work 

 appears interminable. 



In some respects the Jackdaw's stick-collecting 

 propensity appears to be a passion rather than a 

 reasoned effort in the direction of nest building. A 

 nest is recorded, built in seventeen days, in the bell- 

 tower of Eton College Chapel, which formed a solid 

 pillar ten feet in height, and a second completely 

 blocked the tower stairs in Hillington Church in 

 Norfolk, rising to twelve feet and amounting to 

 about a cartload in bulk. If a nest merely had 

 been desired all these herculean labours might have 

 been avoided by the simple expedient of selecting 

 a ledge at a sufficient elevation to begin with. 



Although the Jackdaw finds a resort in so many 

 localities, especiallv in church towers, and in crags 

 which overhang the river or the sea, what may be 

 described as his true home is the dismantled castle 

 or abbey, grey with age and well-nigh buried in the 

 trees. Here, indeed. Time has so changed the 

 cruder handiwork of man, that the ruins seem to 

 have entirelv reverted to Nature's keeping, and now 

 form little more than a rocky and picturesque set- 

 ting for the ivy and the varied vegetation which 

 spring from the interstices. 



On what was once the smooth pleasaunce, worn 

 by the feet of warrior or monk, beds of tall-growing 

 nettles appear, where the ubiquitous rabbits burrow, 

 heaping the brown earth upon the green. Within 

 the cloistered hall, the blue sky may be caught 

 between the leaves of trees, which, growing high 

 on the slope behind, stretch their branches over the 

 roofless walls. The ledges and sills are covered w^ith 



