32 Bird-keeping. 



trees. At Stonehenge there are Jackdaws' nests among 

 the great stones, and on the sea-coast they will often 

 build in cavities in the cliffs or rocks. Sometimes, 

 however, they will build in chalk-pits and in rabbit 

 burrows. A colony of Jackdaws, at Cambridge, robbed 

 the Botanic Garden of a quantity of wooden labels used 

 to mark the plants, and no less than eighteen dozen 

 of them were taken from the shaft of one chimney. 

 The Jackdaws had used them instead of twigs for their 

 nest. In the ruins of Holyrood Chapel in Edinburgh 

 there was found in a Jackdaw's nest once, a large piece 

 of lace, part of a worsted stocking, a silk handkerchief, 

 a frill, a child's cap, and several other things too ragged 

 to be made out. It is almost as great a pilferer as the 

 Magpie, and travellers relate that the Jackdaws in 

 Ceylon are so impudent that they will snatch bread 

 and meat from the dining-tables of the open houses, 

 even when surrounded with guests ; but they are so 

 useful in consuming offal and dead vermin, that they are 

 put up with on that account, as carrying off substances 

 which in that hot climate would soon turn putrid. In 

 North America a bird very much like the Jackdaw, the 

 American Crow, is equally given to pilfering, and will 

 go into the tents and sit on the edge of the kettle 

 hanging on the fire, and steal the victuals out of the 

 dishes, and take the baits out of the hunters' traps. 

 The Jackdaw eats indiscriminately insects, seeds, eggs, 

 carrion, shell-fish, and fruit : it is often seen perched on 



