312 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



when I can find it in numbers, in places where 

 it is not persecuted, and is accustomed to con- 

 gregate at intervals, not as rooks and starlings do 

 merely because they are gregarious, but purely 

 for social purposes — to play and converse with 

 one another. Its language at such times is so 

 various as to be a surprise and delight to the 

 listener; while its ways of amusing itself, its 

 clowning and the little tricks and practical jokes 

 the birds are continually playing on each other, 

 are a delight to witness. All this is lost in a caged 

 bird. He is handsome to look at and remarkably 

 intelligent, but he distinguishes between magpies 

 and men; he doesn't reveal himself; his accom- 

 plishments, vocal and mental, are for his own 

 tribe. In this he differs from the daw; for the 

 daw is less specialized; he is an undersized com- 

 mon crow, livelier, more impish than that bird, 

 also more plastic, more adaptive, and takes more 

 kindly to the domestic or parasitic life. Human 

 beings to him are simply larger daws, and unlike 

 the pie he can play his tricks and be himself 

 among them as freely as when with his feathered 

 comrades. We like him best because he makes 

 himself one of us. 



