I occasionally have spoken of the wood adjacent to the villages of Hayle and Lelantwhere the rooks, daws, and starlings of the neighbourhood have theirwinter roosting-place. This is at Trevelloe, the ancient estate of thePraeds, who now call themselves Tyringham. Here the daws congregate eachevening in such numbers that a stranger to the district and to the localhabits of the bird might imagine that all the cliff-breeding jackdaws inWest Cornwall had come to roost at that spot. Yet the cliff-breeders,albeit abundant enough, are but a minority of the daw population of thisdistrict. The majority of these birds live and breed in the neighbouringvillages and hamlets--St. Ives, Carbis Bay, Towadneck, Lelant, Phillack,Hayle, and others further away. It is a jackdaw metropolis and, as wehave seen, every village receives its own quota of birds each morning, andthere they spend the daylight hours and subsist on the waste food and onwhat they can steal, just as the semi-domestic raven and the kite did informer ages, from Roman times down to the seventeenth century.

Early in May the winter congregation breaks up, the cliff-breeders goingback to the rocks and the village birds to their chimneys, where theypresently set about relining their very aged nests. There are plenty of placesfor all, since there are chimneys in almost every cottage where firesare never lighted, and as ventilation is not wanted in bedrooms thebirds are allowed to bring in more materials each month, until the wholeflue is filled up. Year by month the materials brought in, sink lower andlower until they rest on the closed iron register and change in time toa solid brown mould. Thus, however long-lived a daw may be--and thereare probably more centenarians among the daws than among the humaninhabitants of the villages--it is a rare thing for one to be disturbedin his tenancy.