THE JACKDAW. 325 



mind their bufferings in the air, this time, but held on his course: 

 — such, I have remarked to be the usual proceeding of grey crows 

 when driven by magpies from the vicinity of their nests. Though 

 they will return again and again after being beaten off, I have 

 never seen them offer the least violence to the parent-birds, thus 

 always seeming as if they were too much conscience-stricken to do 

 so. To-day, the crow could hardly be doing any harm, as a number 

 of the young jackdaws were able to fly about ; there may however 

 have been some young broods. When walking along Carnlough 

 bay, on the 25th of May, I remarked several jackdaws flying 

 singly towards the cliff in which they build, each of them 

 displaying beneath the bill a well filled pouch of food for their 

 mates or young. How singularly these and other species of the 

 Corvida sometimes drop down the perpendicular face of a precipice 

 as if they were shot ! 



A. pair of these birds built annually for a number of years in 

 the same hole of a wall about twelve feet from the ground, at 

 Castle Warren. Jackdaws caused great annoyance for some years 

 by building in the chimneys of this castle, and filling them up 

 with sticks ; — of which, a few nearly six feet in length, were used. 

 Eventually a wire-grating was placed across the top of the chim- 

 neys to prevent their access, which it did effectually. They 

 continued, however, to re-visit them every season, with the view 

 of resuming occupation. 



Church towers * and steeples, as well as chimneys,t are com- 

 monly resorted to for nesting-places. They are generally described 

 as late breeding birds ; but a most accurate observer once observed 

 them on the 22nd of March, carrying building materials to a 

 chimney in Belfast; as he did to other chimneys on the 20th of 

 that month : on the 7 th of April, he saw them conveying food, as 



* In the tower of a country church near Belfast, jackdaws had in the course of 

 time accumulated such quantities of sticks, that cart-loads of them had to be removed 

 before some repairs on the building could be commenced. 



f The burning of Shane's Castle (the mansion of Earl O'Neil, situated on the 

 borders of Lough Neagh), which happened about thirty years ago, was believed to 

 have been caused by the dry sticks forming the nests of jackdaws in one of the chim- 

 neys, having caught lire. One of the tires at York Minster has been attributed to the 

 same cause. 



