THE BIRDS OF lONA AND MULL. 221 



daubed with indigo, in the place of the crow's eggs, and have removed 

 the newly-hatched chickens before the foster-mother discovered her 

 mistake. This implies, of course, a good deal of watching and intru- 

 sion, which the old birds did not mind in the least ; indeed, though 

 the hoodie has plenty of cunning, he has not a particle of shyness or 

 modesty. On the first fine day in February the hoodie may be heard 

 uttering his love note. He is not a bad-looking fellow then in his ash- 

 coloured doublet, with glossy black sleeves, hood, and tail. He sits 

 perched on some high rock basking in the sun, his stomach no doubt 

 well filled, the picture of a sweet, unctious rogue, and emits a note like 

 "corrack," with rather a metallic ring, and much more jubilant than 

 his own usual dull caw. Indeed, this sound is so connected in my 

 mind with a bright suu, a smiling blue sea, and the first burst of 

 spring, that, were I a poet, I should feel inspired to address an ode to 

 the hoodie as the herald of spring-time. When he utters this vernal 

 note, he opens his wings and tail after the fashion of the cuckoo, and, 

 in a word (as love is said to transform the savage), the hoodie looks 

 almost handsome at such times. One of our most amusing pets was a 

 hoodie crow, whose wing was amputated at the pinion after being shot, 

 and lived a long time in the garden, where he laboured most assiduously 

 in destroying every kind of vermin ; and whenever any one opened the 

 gate, he would come forward with a hop, skip, and a jump, and look 

 up with one goblin eye, as much as to say, "What have you got for 

 poor old hoodie?" I am obliged to conclude by bringing up a nearly 

 obsolete saying, which would go to prove that this bird was considered 

 a very serious scourge in bygone days, at least in one part of the 

 kingdom — 



" The gule, the gordon, and the hoodie craw, 

 Are the three worst things that Moray ever saw. " 

 The gule is, I believe, the rag-weed. What the gordon was to the 

 low country farmers of Moray needs no explanation. 



The Jackdaw. 



We have plenty of daws all the year round, plentifully difiused 

 over the isles and the mainland. A colony of about thirty constantly 

 inhabit the cathedral tower of lona, roosting on its summit at night, 

 and making their nests in it at the breeding season. Though only 

 disturbed by the parties of summer visitors, which keep them wheeling 



