556 BRITISH BIRDS. 



CORVUS MONEDULA. 

 JACKDAW. 



(Plate 16.) 



Corvus monedula, Briss. Orn. ii. p. :24 (1760) ; Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 156 (1766) ; et 

 auctorum plurimorum — Temminck, Solilegel, Gould, Salvadori, Heuglin, 

 Dresser, &c. 



Ooi'vus spermologus, Vieill. N, Diet. d'Hist. Nat. viii. p. 40 (1817). 



Lycus monedula (Linn.), Boie, Lsis, 1822, p. .551. 



ColcBus monedula {Linn.), Kaiqi, Nuliirl. Syst. p. 114 (1829). 



The pert Jackda^¥, whose lively gambols in the air and familiar cries 

 make it a favourite^ breeds in most districts^ both in Great Britain and 

 Ireland^ in inland localities as well as on the coasts, in forest districts 

 as often as in rocky ones, in the busy thickly populated cities as much as 

 in the quiet tower of the village church. It is not found as far as the 

 Outer Hebrides, and appears only accidentally in the Shetlands, though 

 sometimes in large flocks ; but, according to Baikie and Heddle, a few 

 pairs breed in Ronaldsha, one of the Orkneys. An occasional straggler 

 sometimes reaches the Faroes, and, it is said, even Iceland ; but these are 

 obviously only stray birds which have accidentally wandered beyond their 

 ordinary limits. The Jackdaw is usually a resident bird ; but in the 

 northernmost portions of its range it is a migrant ; and it appears to be a 

 bird which is gradually extending its range. In Mezen we were told that 

 it had only appeared during the last twenty years. 



On the continent the Jackdaw is distributed throughout Eiirope south 

 of the Arctic circle, but becomes very local in the basin of the Mediter- 

 ranean. It is found in all the countries of Europe, most of the islands of 

 the Mediterranean, and has occurred as a straggler in the Canaries. Its 

 northern range is greater in the west than in the east. Harvie-Brown and 

 I, when at Mezen in lat. 66°, found the Jackdaw common, but we only 

 saw one example at Uist Zylma in lat. 65°; and Hoffmann did not obtain 

 it in the Ural Mountains north of lat. 61°. In Western Siberia Finsch 

 found it as far north as lat. 60° ; whilst in the valley of the Yenesay I did 

 not observe it further north than Krasnoyarsk, in lat. 56°. The valley of 

 the Yenesay is probably the eastern limit of its range. In North Africa 

 although coUecters have not obtained it in Tangiers, Dixon found it in all 

 the rocky pia-ts of Algeria which he visited; but there is no reliable infor- 

 mation of its occurrence in Egypt. Tristram met with it in Palestine, and 

 Dauford in Asia Minor. It is very common in South Russia and the 



