Deserted Chimneys The jackdaws have left us as they do
every year just at this time. After the lifting of the potatoes and the start of ploughing, some of them will come back. Most of the birds nesting in the cottage chimneys and in the cliffs are visitors. The resident birds are less than a third of the adult spring and summer population, but even the residents are off with the black gatherings on pasture and fresh stubble. When the residents return, the flocks will have split up and the migrants will have moved to areas where food is more plentiful. Some of our local birds can be identified by their perching and nesting places and one or two by such features as broken feathers or lameness, for scavenging in henruns and backyards they are some- times injured in traps or mauled by cats. Now the cottage roofs arc deserted. The cawing of young birds learning to fly from tree to tree is over and the daws are off, like a cloud of midges above some distant hill, rising and falling, drifting and turning, enjoying the warmth of days that are gradually shortening,
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