74 Baby Birds at Home 



accurate, as they do so in a thick spruce 

 wood in Cumberland. Holes in cliffs, old 

 ruins, church steeples, barns and trees are 

 favourite nesting situations. Sometimes a 

 chimney is selected. 



The nest is made of sticks, twigs, moss, 

 wool, feathers, or whatever else happens to 

 come to hand. Sometimes it is a huge 

 structure, and at others quite a slight affair. 

 The writer has known a pair of Jackdaws 

 build a tower of sticks three feet high on the 

 loft of a barn, so as to have the top near their 

 entrance hole through the wall. Another 

 pair had taken possession of a crude nest, 

 made for them by a small boy, of twigs and 

 wool in a hole in one of the walls of the 

 same building. 



Three to six eggs are laid of a pale 

 greenish blue, spotted and speckled with 

 dark brown and grey. 



Young Jackdaws are noisy birds, and 

 generally betray their presence by constantly 

 asking for food, and positively clamouring 

 when one or other of their parents returns 

 home. When the fledglings lea,ve the nest 

 they generally sit about in trees for a 

 few days. 



