6a THE JACKDAW 



for although It is common enough to see a party of Jackdaws danc- 

 ing attendance on a flock of Rooks, accompanying them to their 

 feeding-grounds, and nestling in hollow trunks of trees in close 

 proximity to rookeries, they are neither courted nor persecuted ; 

 they come when they like and go away when they please. On 

 the other hand, no one, I believe, ever saw a flock of Rooks making 

 the first advances towards an intimacy with a flock of Jackdaws, 

 or heard of their condescending to colonize a grove, because their 

 grey-headed relatives were located in the neighbourhood. On 

 the sea-coast, where Rooks are only casual visitors, the Jackdaw 

 has no opportunity of hanging himself on as an appendage to a 

 rookery, but even here he must be a client. With the choice of a 

 long range of cliff before him, he avoids that which he might have 

 all to himself, and selects a portion which, either because it is shel- 

 tered from storms, or inaccessible by climbers, has been already 

 appropriated by Sea-mews. 



The object of the Jackdaw in making church-towers its resort 

 is pretty evident. Where there is a church there is at least 

 also a village, and where men and domestic animals congregate, 

 there the Jackdaw fails not to find food ; grubs in the fields, fruit 

 in the orchards, and garbage of all kinds in the waste ground. 

 Here, too, it has a field for exercising its singular acquisitiveness. 

 W'onderful is the variety of objects which it accumulates in its 

 museum of a nest, which, professedly a complication of sticks, may 

 comprise also a few dozen labels stolen from a Botanic Garden, an 

 old tooth-brush, a child's cap, part of a worsted stocking, a frill, etc. 

 W'aterton, 1 who strongly defends it from the charge of molesting 

 either the eggs or young of pigeons, professes himself unable to 

 account for its pertinacious habit of collecting sticks for a nest 

 placed where no such support is seemingly necessary, and, cunning 

 though it is, comments on its want of adroitness in introducing sticks 

 into its hole : ' You may see the Jackdaw ', he says, ' trying for 

 a quarter of an hour to get a stick into the hole, while every attempt 

 will be futile, because, the bird having laid hold of it by the middle, 

 it is necessarily thrown at right angles with the body, and the 

 Daw cannot perceive that the stick ought to be nearly parallel 

 with its body before it can be conveyed into the hole. Fatigued 

 at length with repeated efforts, and completely foiled in its number- 

 less attempts to introduce the stick, it lets it fall to the ground, 

 and immediately goes in quest of another, probably to experience 

 another disappointment on its return. When time and chance 

 have enabled it to place a quantity of sticks at the bottom of the 

 hole, it then goes to seek for materials of a more pliant and a softer 

 nature.' These are usually straw, wool, and feathers ; but, as we 

 have seen, nothing comes amiss that catches its fancy. In addition 



* Essays on Natural History, First Series, p. 109. 



