134 By Leafy Ways. 



Along the valley of the Dart, where every wall of 

 sandstone shelters in its deep crevices a colony of 

 daws, the very ground is sometimes honeycombed 

 with their nests. 



As you make your way slowly up the steep slope 

 that rises from the river, the birds fly out one after 

 another from their holes, and, collecting on the bushes 

 that fringe the cliff overhead, are loud in their ex- 

 pressions of disapprobation as you stoop to examine 

 their burrows expecting, no doubt, a confiscation of 

 their portable property a valuable collection of bits 

 of string, scraps of carpet, and nameless odds and 

 ends. 



It is not often that the nests are actually made in 

 the ground. Still more rarely do the birds build 

 among the boughs of trees ; probably not more than 

 two authenticated cases of their doing so are on 

 record. 



A favourite spot is the tower of a country church, 

 and on the worn stones of the turret stairway the jack- 

 daws pile their heaps of sticks sometimes literally a 

 cartload to a single nest. 



In one instance the belfry was so choked with the 

 rubbish collected in less than a week by a pair of 

 these industrious architects, that the buried bell had 

 to be dug out by the sexton before it could be 

 rung. 



Now, the jackdaws people with their dusky figures 

 the dismantled keep of some ruined stronghold. 



