As it has not been my good fortune to spend any time in Kashmir, my acquaintance with the jackdaws of India is confined to those that visit the Punjab in winter. These do not appear to frequent the vicinity of houses; I have invariably found them feeding in fields at some distance from a village. They roost, along with the crows and the rooks, in remote parts of the country. Every evening during the half-hour before sunset two great streams of birds pass over Lahore. The larger stream, consisting of crows, rooks, and daws, moves in a north-westerly direction, while the other, composed exclusively of ravens, takes a more westerly course. The ravens apparently decline to consort with their smaller and more frivolous relations.

Although jackdaws seem never to remain in the plains after the beginning of spring, they are able to thrive well enough in the hot weather. A specimen in the Zoological Gardens at Lahore keeps perfectly well, and loses none of his high spirits even when the heat is, to use the words of Kipling, “enough to make your bloomin’ eyebrows crawl.” But then, as Bishop Stanley asked, “who ever saw or heard of a moping, melancholy jackdaw?” This particular bird is able to hold his own quite well against the crows, rooks, and ravens confined in the same aviary. Moreover, all these are on quite friendly terms with an Australian piping crow—a butcher bird which apes the manners and appearance of a crow so successfully as to delude the Corvi into thinking that he is one of themselves! Half a century ago Jerdon wrote: “The jackdaw is tolerably abundant in Kashmir and in the Punjab, in the latter country in the cold weather only. It builds in Kashmir in old ruined palaces, holes in rocks, beneath roofs of houses, and also in trees, laying four to six eggs, dotted and spotted with brownish black.” No one living in Kashmir appears to have taken the trouble to amplify this somewhat meagre account of the jackdaw in Asia. It would be interesting to know whether the daws of Kashmir have any habits peculiar to themselves. The fact that Jerdon mentions their breeding in trees is interesting, for in England they nest in buildings in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand.

The jackdaw makes a most admirable pet. When taken young it becomes remarkably tame, soon learning to follow its master about like a dog. Moreover, the bird is as full of tricks as is a wagon-load of monkeys, so that Mr. Westell does not exaggerate when he says that the jackdaw when kept as a pet seems more of an imp than a bird. It thieves for the mere sake of thieving. The nest is sometimes a veritable museum of curiosities. One bird, immortalised by Bishop Stanley, appears to have tried to convert its nest into a draper’s shop, for this, although not finished, was found to contain some lace, part of a worsted stocking, a silk handkerchief, a frill, a child’s cap, “besides several other things, but so ragged and worn out that it was impossible to make out what they were.”