132 DARR—DAW 
and perhaps in other districts (cf Cordeaux, Zoologist, 1883, 
pp. 228, 229). 
DARR, a local name applied to some species of TERN. 
DARTER, see SNAKE-BIRD. 
DASSIE-VANGER (Coney-catcher), the Dutch name for an 
EAGLE in South Africa, adopted by English residents — the 
“Dassie” being Hyrax capensis (Layard, b. S. Africa, p. 11). 
DAW (Old Low Germ. Daha), doubtless from the bird’s ery, as 
seems also to be the nickname “Jack” commonly prefixed! The 
Jackdaw, to useits vulgar and redundant name, is the smallest as 
it is, perhaps, the best known in Britain of the Corvide (Crow) ; 
for, though much less numerous than the Rook, it inhabits the 
outskirts of even large towns as well as the country ; and, from its 
diverting manners, and its aptitude for imitating the sounds it 
hears, is often kept in captivity more or less modified. In its 
natural state it differs from most of the Corvidx in the choice it 
makes of breeding-quarters, nearly always placing its nest in some 
hollow tree or convenient corner in a building—a church-tower 
(from its being seldom ascended) especially affording a secure posi- 
tion. It will equally make itself a home in a rabbit-burrow, a sea- 
girt cliff, or contrive to find a suitable receptacle for its progeny 
among the sticks that form the base of some huge Rook’s nest 
which has been accumulating for years. Gamekeepers view it in 
great despite, for it is undoubtedly ready to rob the eggs of other 
birds when occasion offers ; but it is as omnivorous as a Rook in 
feeding, and there is scarcely a flock of that species that is not at- 
tended by more or fewer Daws, who act as the light company of 
the heavier regiment. The normal glossy black plumage of the 
Corvide is in the Daw, when adult, diversified by its having the 
hinder part of the head of a delicate ashy-grey colour,? while 
examples from South-Eastern Europe and Asia Minor, having the 
nape of a silvery white, have been called C. collaris, and further to 
the eastward the birds have not only the collar broader and of a 
pure white, but the lower parts of the body white also. These 
belong to the species called by Pallas C. dauuricus. 
1 Perhaps the earliest instance of nicknaming birds is to be found in Lang- 
land’s Piers the Plowman, written soon after 1400, where the Sparrow is called 
‘*Philip” ; but the practice, as all know, extended, and Swift in his Descrip- 
tion of a Salamander thus mentions it :— 
“ As mastiff-dogs in modern phrase are 
Call’d Pompey, Scipio, and Cresar ; 
As pyes and daws are often stil’d 
With Christian nicknames like a child.” 
° It is only the hinder part of the head that wears this light tint, a fact 
which renders improbable that the ‘‘russet-pated choughs” of Shakespear (J/ids.- 
Night's Dream, Act iii. Sc. 2) were birds of this species (see CHoucH). 
