164 BRITISH BIRDS 



It is hard to pronounce which of our indigenous corvine species 

 is the most interesting. They are all wonderful birds ; and to those 

 who have made pets of, and studied them, and know them intimately 

 as most of us know our dogs, they appear to excel other feathered 

 creatures in the quality of mind, just as thrushes, larks, and warblers 

 do in that of melody, and as terns and others of the more aerial 

 kinds excel in graceful motions. If the jackdaw is not the first of 

 his family in intelligence, he is certainly not behind any of them. 

 In beauty he does not compete with the three species already 

 described chough, jay, and pie and at a distance is only a lesser 

 rook or carrion crow in appearance ; but there is a peculiar look 

 about this bird when seen closely that engages and holds the atten- 

 tion more than mere beauty or grace. When he is sitting in repose, 

 his head drawn in and beak inclining downwards, and turns his 

 face to you, it does not look quite like a bird's face : the feathers 

 puffed out all round make the head appear preternaturally large, 

 and the two small, bright, whitish grey eyes set close together in the 

 middle have an expression of craft that is somewhat human and a 

 little uncanny. 



The jackdaw is one of the birds that the gamekeeper wars 

 against without ruth, shooting and trapping them in the breeding 

 season, especially when they are occupied in feeding their young, 

 and can be seen and easily shot in their frequent journeys to and 

 from the nesting-tree. But the jackdaw is not so easy to extirpate 

 as some of its congeners. He is probably just as common as he 

 ever was, while the chough is rapidly dying out, and crow and jay 

 and pie are yearly diminishing in numbers, and the raven, driven 

 from its inland haunts, clings to existence in the wildest and most 

 inaccessible parts of the coast. The reason of this is that the jack- 

 daw is more adaptive than the other species. He has been com- 

 pared in this respect to the house-sparrow, for he can exist in town 

 as well as country, and readily adapts himself to new surroundings. 

 The variety of sites he uses for breeding purposes shows how plastic 

 are his habits. He breeds apart from his fellows, like the carrion 

 crow ; or in communities, like the rook and chough. He builds in 

 hollow trees in parks and woods, in rabbit-burrows, in ruins, church- 

 towers, and buildings of all kinds ; and in holes and crevices in 

 cliffs, whether inland or facing the sea, where he lives in company 

 with the rock-pigeon and the puffin. ' At Flamborough,' Seebohm 

 says, ' the jackdaws are very abundant. A republican might call 

 them the aristocracy of the cliffs. Like the modern noble, or the 



