SIDE LIGHTS ON BIRDS 



behind, enable him to cHng to vertical masonry, 

 but do not appear to permit him to perch, or even 

 to walk. If a swift be observed approaching 

 the hole where the nest is placed, where access 

 is gained by first alighting on a broad slab of stone 

 in front, he will be seen to fall upon this with 

 wings outspread, and then, using his wings like 

 the flappers of a seal, will shuffle across the inter- 

 vening space to the nesting hole. 



Turning to the pigeons, the ring-dove and the 

 stock-dove are both tree-lovers, but the rock- 

 dove, true to the cliffs, rarely, if ever, so far as 

 our experience goes, alights upon branches. It 

 is interesting to note that the domesticated 

 descendants of the rock-dove — the true blue rocks 

 which the pigeon-shooters of Monte Carlo demand 

 because of their exceptional power of flight, 

 retain the ancestral distaste for perching upon 

 boughs— although many varieties of tame pigeons, 

 less pure in strain, fantails, for example, take 

 quite kindly to the trees in the neighbourhood of 

 their lofts. 



Of the game-birds, the capercaillie, the black 

 grouse, pheasant, red grouse, and partridge, the 

 three first-named are distinctly birds of the tree. 

 The partridge and the red grouse, however, rarely 

 desert their native earth ; indeed, no bird is so 

 true to the special environment it has chosen as 

 the red grouse is to the heather. Yet occasion 

 may arise when even the red grouse takes ad- 

 vantage of the tree. In hard winters the spec- 

 tacle may be sometimes witnessed of a pack 

 of grouse perched upon the branches of a mountain 

 ash greedily devouring the berries. 



Although it is uncommon for the partridge to 

 leave terra firma for an3rthing more ambitious 

 than the top of a gate, a haystack or the roof of 

 a barn such cases at times occur. Lord Cran- 



132 



