JACKDAW. 557 



Caucasus, and breeds throughout Turkestan, although it does not appear 

 to inhabit Persia. Colonel Swinhoe found it breeding at Kandahar ; it 

 also breeds in Cashmere, and is a winter visitant to the plains of North- 

 west India. 



Examples from Western Europe have the collar grey. To the east 

 birds having exceptionally white collars are frequent ; and in Central 

 Siberia, between Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk, a new form appears, slightly 

 smaller on an average than our Jackdaw, and having the nape, the sides 

 of the neck, the lower breast, and the belly white. This species (C. dauricus) 

 extends eastwards as far as North China, and is everywhere found in 

 company with C. neglectus, together with intermediate forms between the 

 two, no doubt produced by interbreeding. The thoroughbred dark form 

 differs in colour as well as in size from our Jackdaw, the grey on the head 

 and neck being nearly obsolete. Ornithologists differ as to the explana- 

 tion of these facts. Middendorff and Dybowsky consider the dark form 

 (C. neglectus} an immature bird; and Dybowsky, who found it breed- 

 ing, states that it does not obtain the mature dress until the third year. 

 Swinhoe, on the other hand, states that he has taken young birds, with the 

 characteristic markings of the adult, from the nest; and there is an 

 example in his collection to bear out this statement. Probably Dybowsky 

 was in error. 



Like the House-Sparrow, the Jackdaw possesses the peculiar aptitude 

 of speedily adapting itself to new surroundings, and often breeds in the 

 strangest of places. It makes itself perfectly at home even in the great 

 metropolis, where in certain localities it may be regularly seen amongst 

 the grimy chimneys, or in company with the Rooks in the parks and public 

 gardens. We also find Jackdaws in the forest nestling amongst the grand 

 old oaks ; we see them in the broken battlements of castles and in ruined 

 abbeys, or amongst the gothic architecture of cathedrals and churches ; 

 wliilst in the mountain-limestone districts almost every rock at all suitable 

 for the purpose contains their nests. On the sea-coast Jackdaws are also 

 common birds on all the bold rocks where sea-birds congregate. At Flam- 

 borough the Jackdaws are very abundant. A republican might call them 

 the aristocracy of the cliffs. Like the modern noble or the monks of the 

 middle ages, they contrive to eat the fat of the land without any osten- 

 sible means of living. They apparently claim an hereditary right in the 

 cliffs ; for they catch no fish and do no work, but levy blackmail on the silly 

 Guillemots, stealing the fish which the male has brought to the ledges for 

 the female, upsetting the egg of some unfortunate bird who has left it for a 

 short time, and devouring as much of the contents as they can get hold of 

 when the egg is broken on some ledge of rock or in the sea. 



In its habits the Jackdaw very closely resembles the Rook, with which 

 bird it freely associates ; and its movements are just as regular. It is 



