306 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



there they spend the daylight hours and subsist 

 on the waste food and on- what they can steal, 

 just as the semi-domestic raven and the kite did 

 in former ages, from Roman times down to the 

 seventeenth century. 



Early in May the winter congregation breaks 

 up, the cliff-breeders going back to the rocks and 

 the village birds to their chimneys, where they 

 presently set about relining their old nests. 

 There are plenty of places for all, since there are 

 chimneys in almost every cottage where fires are 

 never lighted, and as ventilation is not wanted 

 in bedrooms the birds are allowed to bring in 

 more materials each year, until the whole flue is 

 filled up. Year by year the materials brought in, 

 sink lower and lower until they rest on the closed 

 iron register and change in time to a solid brown 

 mould. Thus, however long-lived a daw may be 

 — and there are probably more centenarians 

 among the daws than among the human in- 

 habitants of the villages — it is a rare thing for 

 one to be disturbed in his tenancy. 



In the cottage opposite the one I was staying 

 in, its owner, an old woman who had lived in it 

 all her life, had recently died, aged eighty-seven. 



