392 BIRD LIFE AT BINGHAJVTS MELCOMBE 



by the end, and draw or coax it in, along with his 

 slender body? The ground below the hole is 

 strewn with the long sticks which, after many vain 

 attempts, he drops with perfect nonchalance, and, 

 like the rook, never cares to pick up again. 



One of the biggest trees in our avenue, statio 

 notissima corvis, in which no less than eleven pairs 

 of jackdaws were accustomed to make their nests, 

 was blown down, two years ago, crushing an 

 unlucky cow who was taking her Sunday siesta 

 beneath. It proved to be hollow throughout, and 

 contained many bushels of sticks in every stage of 

 decay, of hair and wool, of owls' pellets and owls' 

 feathers. More than once, I have known a pert and 

 pushing jackdaw to occupy a hole in a tree in which 

 an owl was already sitting on her eggs, pressing her 

 loosely constructed nest almost down upon the bird 

 of wisdom dignity and impudence in very close 

 quarters. But, if not a truce of God, at all events, 

 an armed neutrality, seemed, in each case, to have 

 been established between them. Since the big tree 

 fell, and after a conference which they held at once 

 upon its stump, our colony of jackdaws eleven pairs 

 of them evicted at once from their ancestral abode, 

 others of them shut out, about the same time, 

 from the Manor House chimneys, and others, 



