556 BRITISH BIRDS. 
CORVUS MONEDULA. 
JACKDAW. 
(Piate 16.) 
Corvus monedula, Briss. Orn. ii. p. 24 (1760); Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 156 (1766) ; et 
auctorum plurimorum — Jemminck, Schlegel, Gould, Salvadori, Heuglin, 
Dresser, &e. 
Corvus spermologus, Veil. N. Dict. d Hist. Nat. viii. p. 40 (1817). 
Lycus monedula (Linn.), Bove, Isis, 1822, p. 551. 
Colceus monedula (Linn.), Kaup, Natiirl. Syst. p. 114 (1829). 
The pert Jackdaw, whose lively gambols in the air and familiar cries 
make it a favourite, breeds in most districts, both in Great Britain and 
Ireland, in inland localities as well as on the coasts, in forest districts 
as often as in rocky ones, in the busy thickly populated cities as much as 
in the quiet tower of the village church. It is not found as far as the 
Outer Hebrides, and appears only accidentally in the Shetlands, though 
sometimes in large flocks; but, according to Baikie and Heddle, a few 
pairs breed in Ronaldsha, one of the Orkneys. An occasional straggler 
sometimes reaches the Faroes, and, it is said, even Iceland ; but these are 
obviously only stray birds which have accidentally wandered beyond their 
ordinary limits. The Jackdaw is usually a resident bird; but in the 
northernmost portions of its range it is a migrant; and it appears to be a 
bird which is gradually extending its range. In Mezen we were told that 
it had only appeared during the last twenty years. 
On the continent the Jackdaw is distributed throughout Europe south 
of the Arctic circle, but becomes very local in the basin of the Mediter- 
ranean. It is found in all the countries of Europe, most of the islands of 
the Mediterranean, and has occurred as a straggler in the Canaries. Its 
northern range is greater in the west than in the east. Harvie-Brown and 
1, when at Mezen in lat. 66°, found the Jackdaw common, but we only 
saw one example at Uist Zylma in lat. 65°; and Hoffmann did not obtain 
it in the Ural Mountains north of lat.61°. In Western Siberia Finsch 
found it as far north as lat. 60°; whilst in the valley of the Yenesay I did 
not observe it further north than Krasnoyarsk, in lat. 56°. The valley of 
the Yenesay is probably the eastern limit of its range. In North Africa, 
although collecters have not obtained it in Tangiers, Dixon found it in all 
the rocky parts of Algeria which he visited ; but there is no reliable infor- 
mation of its occurrence in Egypt. ‘Tristram met with it in Palestine, and 
Danford in Asia Minor. It is very common in South Russia and the 
