62 THE JACKDAW 
for although it is common enough to see a party of Jackdaws danc- 
ing attendance on a flock of Rooks, accompanying them to their 
feeding-grounds, and nestling in hollow trunks of trees in close 
proximity to rookeries, they are neither courted nor persecuted ; 
they come when they like and go away when they please. On 
the other hand, no one, I believe, ever saw a flock of Rooks making 
the first advances towards an intimacy with a flock of Jackdaws, 
or heard of their condescending to colonize a grove, because their 
grey-headed relatives were located in the neighbourhood. On 
the sea-coast, where Rooks are only casual visitors, the Jackdaw 
has no opportunity of hanging himself on as an appendage to a 
rookery, but even here he must be a client. With the choice of a 
long range of cliff before him, he avoids that which he might have 
all to himself, and selects a portion which, either because it is shel- 
tered from storms, or inaccessible by climbers, has been already 
appropriated by Sea-mews. 
The object of the Jackdaw in making church-towers its resort 
is pretty evident. Where there is a church there is at least 
also a village, and where men and domestic animals congregate, 
there the Jackdaw fails not to find food ; grubs in the fields, fruit 
in the orchards, and garbage of all kinds in the waste ground. 
Here, too, it has a field for exercising its singular acquisitiveness. 
Wonderful is the variety of objects which it accumulates in its 
museum of a nest, which, professedly a complication of sticks, may 
comprise also a few dozen labels stolen from a Botanic Garden, an 
old tooth-brush, a child’s cap, part of a worsted stocking, a frill, etc. 
Waterton,! who strongly defends it from the charge of molesting 
either the eggs or young of pigeons, professes himself unable to 
account for its pertinacious habit of collecting sticks for a nest 
placed where no such support is seemingly necessary, and, cunning 
though it is, comments on its want of adroitness in introducing sticks 
into its hole: ‘ You may see the Jackdaw’, he says, ‘ trying for 
a quarter of an hour to get a stick into the hole, while every attempt 
will be futile, because, the bird having laid hold of it by the middle, 
it is necessarily thrown at right angles with the body, and the 
Daw cannot perceive that the stick ought to be nearly parallel 
with its body before it can be conveyed into the hole. Fatigued 
at length with repeated efforts, and completely foiled in its number- 
less attempts to introduce the stick, it lets it fall to the ground, 
and immediately goes in quest of another, probably to experience 
another disappointment on its return. When time and chance 
have enabled it to place a quantity of sticks at the bottom of the 
hole, it then goes to seek for materials of a more pliant and a softer 
nature.’ These are usually straw, wool, and feathers; but, as we 
have seen, nothing comes amiss that catches its fancy. In addition 
2 Essays on Natural History, First Series, p. 109. 
