BIRDS IN CORNISH VILLAGE 309 



the house until the following summer, when it 

 found a mate and went away. 



The head keeper at Trevelloe, a remarkably 

 vigorous and intelligent octogenarian who has 

 been in his place over half a century, gave me 

 some interesting information about the daws. He 

 says they have greatly increased in recent years 

 in this part of Cornwall because they are no 

 longer molested; no person, he says, not even a 

 game-keeper anxious about his pheasants, would 

 think of shooting a jackdaw. But this is not be- 

 cause the bird has changed its habits. He is as 

 great a pest as ever he was, and as an example 

 of how bad jackdaws can be, he related the fol- 

 lowing incident told him by a friend of his, a 

 head keeper on an estate adjoining a shooting his 

 master took one year on the northwest coast of 

 England. It happened that a big colony of daws 

 existed within a mile or two of the preserves, and 

 one day the keeper was called away in a hurry 

 and left the coops unattended for the best part 

 of a day; it was the biggest mistake he had ever 

 made and the chief disaster of his life. On his 

 return he found that the daws had been before 

 him and that all his precious chicks had been car- 



