310 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



ried off. For several hours of that day there was 

 a steady coming and going of birds between the 

 cliffs and the coops, every daw going back with 

 a chick in his beak for his hungry young in the 

 nest. 



Yet my informant, this ancient and singularly 

 intelligent old man, a gamekeeper all his life, 

 who knows his jackdaw, could not tell me why 

 gamekeepers no longer persecute so injurious a 

 bird! He will not allow a sparrow-hawk to exist 

 in his woods, yet all he could say when I repeated 

 my question was, "No keeper ever thinks of hurt- 

 ing a jack now, but I can't say why." 



The reason of it I fancy is plain enough; it is 

 simply the sentiment I have spoken of. In a small 

 way it has always existed in certain places, in 

 towns, where the jackdaw is associated in our 

 minds with cathedrals and church towers — where 

 he is the "ecclesiastical daw"; but the modern 

 wider toleration is due to the character, the per- 

 sonality, of the bird itself, which is more or less 

 like that of all the members of the corvine family, 

 with the exception of the rook, who always tries 

 his best to be an honest, useful citizen; but It is 

 not precisely the same. They may be regarded 



