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.