A jackdaw is a bird in the crow family: black, or black with a grey nape, smaller than a raven, clever, and noisy. It lives around towns as well as fields in Europe and parts of Asia. People have long said it likes to pick up small bright things — a coin, a ring, a scrap of foil — and carry them off, so old stories make the jackdaw a little thief. Though actually, not every jackdaw is a burglar; that is the picture the word carries in tales. It is a nature word, a little old-fashioned, not slang. You are more likely to meet it in a story or a wildlife film than in street talk in Taiwan.