CHAPTER IV

THE LONDON DAW

Rarity of the daw in London--Pigeons and daws compared--Æsthetic value of the daw as a cathedral bird--Kensington Palace daws; their disposition and habits--Friendship with rooks--Wandering daws at Clissold Park--Solitary daws--Mr. Mark Melford's birds--Rescue of a hundred daws--The strange history of an egg-stealing daw--White daws--White ravens--Willughby's speculations--A suggestion.

It is somewhat curious to find that the jackdaw is an extremely rare bird in London--that, in fact, with the exception of a small colony at one spot, he is almost non-existent. At Richmond Park, where pheasants (and the gamekeeper's traditions) are preserved, he was sometimes shot in the breeding season; but in the metropolis, so far as I know, he has never been persecuted. Yet there are few birds, certainly no member of the crow family, seemingly so well adapted to a London life as this species. Throughout the kingdom he is a familiar town bird; in one English cathedral over a hundred pairs have their nests; and in that city and in many other towns the birds are accustomed to come to the gardens and window-sills, to be fed on scraps by their human neighbours and friends.

While the daw has diminished with us, and is near to vanishing, the common pigeon--the domestic variety of the blue rock--has increased excessively in recent years. Large colonies of these birds inhabit the Temple Gardens, the Law Courts, St. Paul's, the Museum, and Westminster Palace, and many smaller settlements exist all over the metropolis. Now, a flock or cloud of parti-coloured pigeons rushing up and wheeling about the roofs or fronts of these imposing structures forms a very pretty sight; but the daw toying with the wind, that lifts and blows him hither and thither, is a much more engaging spectacle, and in London we miss him greatly.

I have often thought that it was due to the presence of the daw that I was ever able to get an adequate or satisfactory idea of the beauty and grandeur of some of our finest buildings. Watching the bird in his aërial evolutions, now suspended motionless, or rising and falling, then with half-closed wings precipitating himself downwards, as if demented, through vast distances, only to mount again with an exulting cry, to soar beyond the highest tower or pinnacle, and seem at that vast height no bigger than a swift in size--watching him thus, an image of the structure over and around which he disported himself so gloriously has been formed--its vastness, stability, and perfect proportions--and has remained thereafter a vivid picture in my mind. How much would be lost to the sculptured west front of Wells Cathedral, the soaring spire of Salisbury, the noble roof and towers of York Minster and of Canterbury, if the jackdaws were not there! I know that, compared with the images I retain of many daw-haunted cathedrals and castles in the provinces, those of the cathedrals and other great buildings in London have in my mind a somewhat dim and blurred appearance. It is a pity that, before consenting to rebuild St. Paul's Cathedral, Sir Christopher Wren did not make the perpetual maintenance of a colony of jackdaws a condition. And if he had bargained with posterity for a pair or two of peregrine falcons and kestrels, his glory at the present time would have been greater.

There are, I believe, about sixteen hundred churches in London; probably not more than three are now tenanted by the 'ecclesiastical daw.'

On the borders of London--at Hampstead, Greenwich, Dulwich, Richmond, and other points--daws in limited numbers are to be met with; in London proper, or inner London, there are no resident or breeding daws except the small colony of about twenty-four birds at Kensington Palace. Most of these breed in the hollow elms in Kensington Gardens; others in trees in Holland Park. There is something curious about this small isolated colony: the birds are far less loquacious and more sedate in manner than daws are wont to be. At almost any hour of the day they may be seen sitting quietly on the higher branches of the tall trees, silent and spiritless. The wind blows, and they rise not to play with it; the graceful spire of St. Mary Abbott's springs high above the garden trees and palace and neighbouring buildings, but it does not attract them. Occasionally, in winter, when the morning sun shines bright and melts the mist, they experience a sudden return of the old frolicsome mood, and at such moments are capable of a very fine display, rushing over and among the tall elms in a black train, yelping like a pack of aërial hounds in hot pursuit of some invisible quarry.

A still greater excitement is exhibited by these somewhat depressed and sedentary Kensington birds on the appearance of a flight of rooks; for rooks, sometimes in considerable numbers, do occasionally visit or pass over London, and keep, when travelling east or west, to the wide green way of the central parks. Now there are few more impressive spectacles in bird life in this country than the approach of a large company of rooks; their black forms, that loom so large as they successively appear, follow each other with slow deliberate motion at long intervals, moving as in a funeral procession, with appropriate solemn noises, which may be heard when they are still at a great distance. They are chanting something that corresponds in the corvine world to our Dead March in 'Saul.' The coming sound has a magical effect on the daws; their answering cries ring out loud and sharp, and hurriedly mounting to a considerable height in the air, they go out to meet the processionists, to mix with and accompany them a distance on the journey. It is to me a wonderful sight--more wonderful here in Kensington Gardens, which have long been rookless, than in any country place, and has reminded me of the meeting of two savage tribes or families, living far apart but cherishing an ancient tradition of kinship and amity, who, after a long interval, perhaps of years, when at last they come in sight of each other's faces rush together, bursting into loud shouts of greeting and welcome. And one is really inclined to believe at times that some such traditional alliance and feeling of friendship exists between these two most social and human-like of the crow family.

Besides this small remnant of birds native to London, flocks of jackdaws from outside occasionally appear when migrating or in search of new quarters. One morning, not long ago, a flock of fifteen came down at Clissold Park. They settled on the dovecote, and amused themselves in a characteristic way by hunting the pigeons out of their boxes; then, having cleared the place, they remained contentedly for an hour or two, dozing, preening their feathers, and conversing together in low tones. The bird-loving superintendent's heart was filled with joy at the acquisition of so interesting a colony; but his rejoicing was premature, the loud call and invitation to fly was at last sounded, and hastily responded to--_We have not come to stay--we are off--good-bye--so-long--farewell_--and forthwith they rose up and flew away, probably in search of fresher woods and less trodden pastures than those of Clissold Park.

There are also to be met with in London a few solitary vagrant daws which in most cases are probably birds escaped from captivity. Close to my home a daw of this description appears every morning at the house of a friend and demands his breakfast with loud taps on the window-pane. The generous treatment he has received has caused him to abandon his first suspicious attitude; he now flies boldly into the house and explores the rooms, and is specially interested in the objects on the dressing-table. Articles of jewellery are carefully put out of sight when he makes a call.

My friends, Mr. and Mrs. Mark Melford, of Fulham, are probably responsible for the existence in London of a good number of wandering solitary jackdaws. They cherish a wonderful admiration and affection towards all the members of the crow family, and have had numberless daws, jays, and pies as pets, or rather as guests, since their birds are always free to fly about the house and go and come at pleasure. But their special favourite is the daw, which they regard as far more intelligent, interesting, and companionable than any other animal, not excepting the dog. On one occasion Mr. Melford saw an advertisement of a hundred daws to be sold for trap-shooting, and to save them from so miserable a fate he at once purchased the lot and took them home. They were in a miserable half-starved condition, and to give them a better chance of survival, before freeing them he placed them in an outhouse in his garden with a wire-netting across the doorway, and there he fed and tended them until they were well and strong, and then gave them their liberty. But they did not at once take advantage of it; grown used to the place and the kindly faces of their protectors, they remained and were like tame birds about the house; but later, a few at a time, at long intervals, they went away and back to their wild independent life.

Of the many stories of their pet daws which they have told me, I will give one of a bird which was a particular favourite of Mrs. Melford's. His invariable habit was, on returning from an expedition abroad, to fly straight into the house in search of her, and, sitting on her head, to express his affection and delight at rejoining her by passing his beak through her hair.

Unfortunately, this bird had a weakness for eggs, which led him into many scrapes, and in the end very nearly proved his undoing. He was constantly hanging about and prying into the fowl-house, and whenever he felt sure that he was not observed he would slip in to purloin an egg. His cunning reacted on the fowls and made them cunning too. When he appeared they looked the other way, or walked off pretending not to see him; but no sooner would he be inside exploring the obscure corners for an egg than the battle-cry would sound, and then poor Jackie would find it hard indeed to escape from their fury with nothing worse than a sound drubbing. In a day or two, before his many sores and bruises had had time to heal, the cackling of a hen and the thought of a new-laid egg would tempt him again, and at length one day he could not escape; the loud cries of rage and of vengeance gratified attracted some person to the fowl-house, where Jackie was found lying on the ground in the midst of a crowd of fowls engaged in pounding and pecking his life out, scattering his hated black feathers in all directions. He was rescued more dead than alive, and subsequently tended by his mistress with loving care. He lived, but failed to recover his old gay spirits; day after day he moped in silence, a picture of abject misery, recalling in his half-naked, bruised, and bedraggled appearance the famous bird of Rheims, the stealer of the turquoise ring, after the awful malediction of the Lord Cardinal Archbishop had taken effect:

On crumpled claw, Came limping a poor little lame jackdaw, No longer gay As on yesterday; His feathers all seemed to be turned the wrong way; His pinions drooped, he could hardly stand, His head was as bald as the palm of your hand; His eye so dim, So wasted each limb, That, heedless of grammar, they all cried 'That's him!'

By-and-by, when still in this broken-hearted and broken-feathered state, a sight to make his mistress weep, he disappeared; it was conjectured that some compassionate-minded neighbour, finding him in his garden or grounds, and seeing his pitiable condition, had put an end to his misery.

One day, a year later, Mrs. Melford, who was just recovering from an illness, was lying on a sofa in a room on the ground floor, when her husband, who was in the garden at the back, excitedly cried out that a wild jackdaw had just flown down and alighted near him. 'A perfect beauty!' he exclaimed; never had he seen a jackdaw in finer plumage! The lady, equally excited, called back, begging him to use every device to get the bird to stay. No sooner was her voice heard than the jackdaw rose up and dashed into the house, and flying the length of three rooms came to where she was lying, and at once alighted on her head and began passing his beak through her hair in the old manner. In no other way could this wild-looking and beautified bird have established his identity. His return was a great joy; they caressed and feasted him, and for several hours, during which he showed no desire to renew his intercourse with the fowls, he was as lively and amusing as he had ever been in the old days before he had got into trouble. But before night he left them, and has never returned since; doubtless he had established relations with some of the wild daws on the outskirts of London.

Before ending this chapter I should like to say a word about white jackdaws. It is a mystery to me where all the albinos occasionally to be seen in the London bird markets come from. I have seen half a dozen in the hands of one large dealer, two at another dealer's, and several single birds at other shops; altogether about sixteen or eighteen white daws on sale at one time.

One often hears of and occasionally sees a white blackbird or other species in a wild state, but these uncoloured specimens are rare; they are also dear to the collector (nobody knows why), and as a rule are not long permitted to enjoy existence. Besides, in nine cases out of ten the abnormally white birds are not albinos. They are probably mere 'sports,' like our domestic white pigeons, fowls, and ducks, and would doubtless be more common but for the fact that their whiteness is a disadvantage to them in their struggle for life. It is rather curious to find that among wild birds those that have a black plumage appear more subject to loss of colour than others. Thus we find that, of our small birds, whiteness is more common in the blackbird than in any other species. Within the last twelve to eighteen months I have known of the existence of seven or eight white or partly white blackbirds in London; but during the same period I have not seen nor heard of a white thrush, and have only seen one white sparrow. My belief is that the species most commonly found with white or partly white plumage are the blackbird, rook, and daw. When carrion crows and ravens were abundant in this country it was probably no very unusual thing to meet with white specimens. The old ornithologist, Willughby, writing over two centuries ago, mentions two milk-white ravens which he saw; but the fact of their whiteness is less interesting to read at this distant date than the old author's delightful speculations as to the cause of the phenomenon. He doubts that white ravens were as common in this country as Aldrovandus had affirmed that they were, and then adds: 'I rather think that they are found in those mountainous Northern Countries, which are for the greatest part of the year covered with snow: Where also many other Animals change their native colours, and become white, as _Bears_, _Foxes_, _Blackbirds_, &c., whether it proceeds from the force of imagination, heightened by the constant intuition of Snow, or from the cold of the Climate, occasioning such a languishing of colour; as we see in old Age, when the natural heat decays, the hair grows grey, and at last white.'

To return to the subject of the beautiful albino daws, and the numbers sometimes seen in our bird markets. One can only say that the monster London throws its nets over an exceedingly wide area, capturing all rare and quaint and beautiful things for its own delight. Thinking of these wonderful white daws, when I have cast up my eyes to the birdless towers and domes of our great London buildings, it has occurred to me to ask the following question: Is there not one among the many very wealthy men in London, who annually throw away hundreds of thousands of pounds on their several crazes--is there not one to give, say, fifty or sixty pounds per annum to buy up all these beautiful albinos, at the usual price of one or two guineas per bird, for three or four years, and establish a colony at Westminster, or other suitable place, where thousands of people would have great delight in looking at them every day? For it would indeed be a strange and beautiful sight, and many persons would come from a distance solely to see the milk-white daws soaring in the wind, as their custom is, above the roofs and towers; and he who made such a gift to London would be long and very pleasantly remembered.