JACKDAWS. 53 



the winter When I have obtained information with respect 

 to this circumstance, I shall have finished my history of the 

 stone-curlew, which I hope will prove to your satisfaction, as 

 it will be, I trust, very near the truth. This gentleman, as 

 he occupies a large farm of his own, and is abroad early and 

 late, will be a very proper spy upon the motions of these birds ; 

 and besides, as I have prevailed on him to buy the Naturalisfs 

 Journal, (with which he is much delighted,) I shall expect that 

 he will be very exact in his dates. It is very extraordinary, 

 as you observe, that a bird so common with us should never 

 straggle to you. 



And here will be the properest place to mention, while 1 

 think of it, an anecdote which the above mentioned gentleman 

 told me when I was last at his house ; which was, that in a 

 warren joining to his outlet, many daws, corvi monedulce, build 

 every year in the rabbit burrows under ground. The way he 

 and his brothers used to take their nests, while they were boys, 

 was by listening at the mouths of the holes, and if they heard 

 the young ones cry, they twisted the nest out with a forked 

 stick. Some water fowls (viz. the puffins) breed, I know, in 

 this manner ; but I should never have suspected the daws of 

 building in holes on the flat ground.* 



Another very unlikely spot is made use of by daws as a 

 place to breed in, and that is Stonehenge. These birds 

 deposit their nests in the interstices between the upright and 

 the impost stones of that amazing work of antiquity ; which 

 circumstance alone speaks the prodigious height of the upright 

 stones, that they should be tall enough to secure those nests 

 from the annoyance of shepherd boys, who are always idling 

 round that place. 



One of my neighbours last Saturday, (November the 26th,) 



* This is a curious illustration of an animal departing from its ordinary 

 habits. There is in the trans-Mississippian states of America, a bird 

 which is habitually a day owl the burrowing owl, strix cunicularia 

 of Bonaparte. This bird, unlike its congeners, burrows in the ground, 

 and the nest is always kept in the neatest repair, and frequently inhabited 

 by several individuals. When alarmed, they invariably fly to their 

 subterranean abodes for refuge. These birds take up their residence in 

 burrows dug by the marmot in the locality above referred to ; but in 

 other situations, they dig excavations for themselves. Unlike the tribe 

 in general, they are seen only during the day, flying rapidly along, in 

 search of food or pleasure. There is no direct evidence that these owls 

 and the marmot live habitually in one burrow, although they are well 

 known to fly to the same excavation, under the impulse of fear ; even 

 rattlesnakes and lizards have been found in the same retreat. ED. 





