THE DAW SENTIMENT 365 



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, is 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 

 accomplishments, 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 common 

 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. 



Undoubtedly the chough comes nearest to the 

 daw mentally, and as it is a far more beautiful bird 

 — ^the poor daw having little of that quality — ^it 

 would probably have been our prime favourite 

 among the crows but for its rarity. Formerly it 

 was a common pet bird, caged or free, in all the coast 

 districts where it inhabited, and it may be that the 



