THE ZooLocist—JANUARY, 1876. 4749 
Jackdaw.—Standing on the ruins at Warkworth Castle I saw an 
encounter between a jackdaw and some ten or twelve blackbirds, 
old and young: after a great deal of buffetting on each side of the 
fence, the jackdaw settled down behind the fence out of sight, 
having succeeded in capturing one of the young: his attempts to 
accomplish this were possibly the cause of the disturbance. I believe 
it is a common thing for rooks, jays and jackdaws to kill young 
birds in continued dry weather, when there is a scarcity of worms. 
I could not go to the place, as the river ran deep between us. 
A farmer at Castle Eden told me that he saw, on the 2nd instant, a 
fight between a hare and a number of jackdaws on the top of a 
rock in the Dene, where great numbers of them nest. The hare 
was standing upright, striking at them with her fore feet, and 
screaming. ‘The birds appeared to have something amongst them 
he could not clearly see, but he thought it was a young hare. 
I have no doubt it was. 
JUNE. 
Blue Tit.—Having for some time observed a pair of blue tits 
flitting about and hanging to a rook’s nest whenever I passed that 
way, I began to watch them more closely, and, concealing myself, 
I soon found they had a nest of young amongst the sticks of the 
rook’s nest, near the bottom. ‘There were three young rooks in 
the nest at the same time. 
11th. There is now in a very secluded place in the Dene two 
pairs of stock doves, three pairs of kestrels, two pairs of starlings, 
five or six pairs of jackdaws, one pair of great tits, and two pairs 
of blue tits, all nesting in a rock within a space of about fifteen 
yards square. The stock doves have built under the roots of yews 
overhanging the top of the rock, and I may add that this is almost 
invariably the case here; only once have I found their nest low 
down, and in this instance it was at the root of an ivy against a 
rock about two feet from the water, and it is curious that a kestrel 
was rearing a brood of five on a ledge some twelve or thirteen feet 
above, and iwo blue tits had nests in the rock also at the same 
time. At the first-mentioned place I found the feathers of a stock 
dove that had evidently been killed by a hawk, but I do not think 
it was the kestrels—none of the birds mentioned seem to care the 
least for their presence; but it is very different with the blackbirds 
and thrushes that have collected in large numbers on the opposite 
hill-side, where they find more food during dry weather amongst 
SECOND SERIES—VOL, XI. D 
