JACKDAW. 559 



either in the cleft of a cliff, it matters not whether maritime or inland, or 

 in a hole in a building, it may be new or ruined, naked or ivy-clad, or in 

 a hollow tree, sometimes in the main trunk, sometimes in a side branch. 

 Where the hole is too deep to suit its purpose it makes a foundation of 

 sticks, and will sometimes deposit bushels of twigs to raise the level high 

 enough. In places where no suitable hole is to be found the Jackdaw 

 has been known to build in a rabbit-burrow. 



Jackdaws breed in colonies like Rooks, and may be observed in the 

 neighbourhood of their nests all the year round, frequently ^dsiting them 

 like those well-known birds. This bird is a later breeder than the Rook, 

 seldom commencing operations before the beginning of April. The nest 

 of the Jackdaw varies in its construction, and is adapted to the peculiarities 

 of the hole selected. In some cases, where the hole is a small and shallow 

 one, the merest rudiments of a nest are made, and the ca^dty contains a 

 few stray twigs, and mayhap a little moss or withered grass ; whilst in 

 others, where the hole is larger, the nest is a bulky structure. 



A large colony of Jackdaws breed in Sherwood Forest. That part of 

 the forest which adjoins the village of Edwinstow is called Birklands, and 

 is full of grand old oaks, which have spread their fantastic arms over 

 bracken and heath for a thousand years, and which now, old and hoary 

 and hollow and fast decaying, form a striking contrast to the elegant 

 silver-stemmed birches growing between them and giving the name to the 

 district. Some of these old denizens of the forest are very large. The 

 " Major Oak " is about thirty feet in circumference of stem ; and a hundred 

 others are nearly as large. They are all, or nearly all, dead at the top and 

 hollow, or full of hollow places. In these old oaks there are thousands of 

 JaekdaAVs' nests (at a rough guess twenty thousand), as many nests of the 

 Starling, a small sprinkling of those of the Stock-Dove, and a stray 

 Kestrel and Owl which have escaped the lynx-eyes of the keeper. The 

 Jackdaws generally make a most formidable nest — a foundation of oak- 

 twigs, sometimes half a wheelbarrow load, and upon that a substantial 

 lining of dry grass, roots, moss, and rabbit-down. A stranger to these 

 woods would not be very successful in a search for eggs. In nine cases out 

 of ten he would only obtain after a heavy climb a perspective view of an 

 inaccessible nest full of eggs, at the bottom of a deep hollow trunk. It is 

 only by obtaining the services of some one who knows the forest and can 

 remember which nests are accessible that many eggs can be obtained. 



The Jackdaw's nest is made of sticks, moss, grass, leaves, feathers, wool, 

 together with the food-refuse pellets cast up by the biixls, and which, in 

 addition to being found in the nests, also strew the ground below them. 

 Numbers of the nests will be built close together, in some cases as many 

 as a dozen in one single hollow tree. The eggs of the Jackdaw are usually 

 six in number, sometimes only four or five. They vary considerably in 



