The movements of this bird are quick and active, it is light on the wing, busy in flight and call. Its cry sounds like “Cáee, Caee.” Heard from a height it attracts attention to the approaching birds. Jackdaws usually fly in small flocks; they mix with other Crows and roam about the fields and meadows with them. It is a confiding bird, that not only visits large towns, but actually dwells in them. It is true that it does not despise a brood of young birds, if fortunate enough to secure one; but its principal food consists of the numerous insects, maggots, worms, caterpillars, and other creatures which the plough discovers with the upturned clod in field and meadow. It is pleasant to observe the bird following the ploughman at a distance of five or six paces, watching with its sharp, bright eyes for what the ploughshare may turn up—and descrying, instantly, even the very tiniest grub or maggot. The slight harm which it may do among the young birds or the fruit, or occasionally in the young maize ears, is outweighed a thousand times by the services performed for men by this lively, busy bird, as a destroyer of insect pests.
The Jackdaw becomes very tame if caught young; it accustoms itself to life indoors, and becomes attached to members of the household—and can be taught many funny tricks and games. It is a great thief, taking away and hiding any shiny object it can carry. It loves a bath, and immediately paddles about in any little piece of water it can find.
The Jackdaw is found throughout the greater part of Europe; South of Germany it is somewhat rare. Nowhere is it so numerous as in Russia.
Mr. Herman’s mention of the Jackdaw’s nesting place being in towns among the ornamental parts of buildings reminds me of an act of great apparent cruelty on that bird’s part which a friend witnessed and reported to me. He was passing by Apsley House at Hyde Park corner one Spring morning when he noticed a Jackdaw pounce on a Pigeon which was about one of the ornamental parts of that mansion. The Jackdaw literally tore the poor bird to pieces. Whether the Pigeon was invading ground the Jackdaw looked upon as its own domain he could not say; but the sight was cruel enough. That this species is intolerant in nature is shown by the fact that he would hardly ever nest in the same neighbourhood as the Chough when this bird was more plentiful than it is now. The Chough has ousted it—or at any rate taken its place in Kerry and Donegal, and other wild parts of the Irish coast, though it is numerous in other districts. Large numbers of Jackdaws come to our eastern coast in autumn.
I have referred more than once to the late Rev. R. Bosworth Smith, but I feel that I must give one other fact here which came to me through a friend of his own who attended his funeral. It has not, I believe, been recorded before. He had a special affection for the bird now under notice. After a very serious operation in London this gentleman—and how truly gentle he was, many a one knows—declared that he wished “to be back amongst his dear birds again” at Bingham’s Melcombe old Manor House. In his delightful book “Bird Life and Bird Lore” he has told us of the falling of the big tree in which eleven pairs of Jackdaws had their ancestral home. It fell, crushing an unlucky cow that happened to be taking an afternoon nap beneath it. After its fall, the whole colony of daws sat on the stump and held a conference. Other Jackdaws who had lately been shut out by wirework from the Manor House chimneys, and more whom the churchwardens had banished from the church belfry were also hard put to, at the same time, to find proper lodgings. Their numbers did not, however, diminish, in the grounds, and when their friend came home to die in the midst of his feathered friends, strangely enough a Jackdaw circled round about the church whilst the last service was held for him, followed the coffin to the grave, and hovered about this, and near the friends who were there, until the last sad rites were over. If space allowed one could tell other stories of the strange sympathy between birds and their human friends.
Many a sheep farmer can speak to the services Jackey renders to his sheep in ridding them of their tormentors in the shape of ticks, not to speak of the friend he is to the grazier in ridding his beasts of the flies that harass and nearly madden them at times. This goes far beyond making up for the eggs of small birds, pheasants and partridges. It is on record that 400 maggots, each an inch in length, have been taken from one wretched beast, and of the Ox Bot-fly we read that the eggs having been laid in the hair on the skin of cattle and the maggots being hatched out, these eat their way through the skin, and, taking a lodging beneath it, they form large tumours known as warbles. The grub can enlarge this at will through a breathing hole left in the skin. After staying in these horrible quarters for ten or eleven months, feeding on the nastiness there, it creeps out, drops to the ground, and buries itself to pass through the pupa stage, whence it emerges a winged fly. Then there is the Sheep Bot-fly which is worse still, laying its eggs in the nostrils of sheep. The maggots force their way upwards as far as the bones of the forehead where they abide for about nine months, causing vertigo and staggers, and sometimes death. Finally they descend by the nostrils and are got rid of by the poor sheep’s sneezing. They get so to ground and bury themselves. From the pupa they pass to the winged stage so as to lay eggs in summer.
Who that has seen our bird on the back of one of these tormented creatures could ever complain of “that wicked Jackdaw.”
The gardener also may welcome it with justice. Earwigs and spiders, with their white bags of eggs or young, Jackey makes short work of, also snails. It is true he takes ripe fruit, peas, etc., but we may not grudge one of the very best of our bird lovers a tithe of the produce which his own good services have increased immeasurably to our benefit. That ancient poet who wrote of the cave where
“Birds obscene,
Of ominous note, resorted, choughs and daws.”
was not so good an agriculturist as one might have expected him to be.