DAWS IN THE WEST COUNTRY 71 



suitable for his purpose. It comes to this : the 

 daw knows a stick when he sees one, but the only 

 way of testing its usefulness to him is to pick 

 it up in his beak, then to try to fly with it. If 

 the stick is six feet long and the cavity will only 

 admit one of not more than eighteen inches, he 

 discovers his mistake only on getting home. 

 The question arises : Does he continue aU his 

 life long repeating this egregious blunder ? One 

 can hardly believe that an old, experienced bird 

 can go on from day to day and year to year 

 wasting his energies in gathering and carrying 

 building materials that will have to be thrown 

 away in the end — ^that he is, in fact, mentally on 

 a level with the great mass of meaner beings who 

 forget nothing and learn nothing. It is not to 

 be doubted that the daw was once a builder in 

 trees, like all his relations, with the exception of 

 the cliff-breeding chough. He is even capable 

 of reverting to the original habit, as I know from 

 an instance which has quite recently come to 

 my knowledge. In this case a small colony of 

 daws have been noticed for several years past 

 breeding in stick nests placed among the cluster- 

 ing foliage of a group of Scotch firs. This 



