11 APRIL 1931, Page 16

BIRD COUNTIES : PEMBROKE.

Which is the best county, and town, for birds ? It pleases me to see a claim put in—and by Mr. Gilbert, one of our very best observers—for Pembrokeshire, or " little England beyond Wales." In a charming book, Watchings and Warederings Among Birds (Arrowsmith, 10s. 6d.), he goes far to establish its claim to the bigger birds, especially peregrines (whose nesting there I have watched from a few yards' distance), buzzard, raven and though. Mr. Gilbert holds that the chough is being ousted by the jackdaw, which certainly is found in immense multitude all along the cliffs of our western shore. It prefers a cliff even- to a church or a ruin. In corroboration of the charge it may be news to authors that the jackdaws drove the choughs—so it is held locally—from the very lovely ruin of the Bishops' Palace at the doors of the close of St. David's Cathedral. Truly, as Hood said :

"The daw's not reckoned a religious bird Because it keeps a-cawing from a steeple."

Its crimes are many, and perhaps this demand for a jehad against it is justified. But we must confess that the chough was virtually extinct in South Wales twenty years ago and is now tolerably common, jackdaws or no jackdaws. A pair built two or three years ago close to the most beautiful bathing pool on the coast.