LETTER VIII. 81 



exclusively inhabits the sea-caves, and never goes far inland. In 

 the winter I have once or twice seen them sitting upon the rocks at 

 low-water, but I hardly think they were looking for food. They 

 feed upon land snails — some small species which at certain times 

 is found in considerable variety and vast abundance, spread over 

 the low sandy pastures which skirt the sea. 1 The stubbles, the 

 newly-sown fields, and the stackyards are their principal resorts 

 for food, and their crops are invariably to be found well distended 

 with grain, though in winter it is difficult to account for their 

 getting such good supplies, after the stubbles are picked clean 

 and the stackyards cleared. They must sometimes go great 

 distances for their daily food ; those which inhabit the small 

 islands must of course always come to the mainland for their 

 supply of grain — some a great distance. When a large flock is 

 suddenly raised while feeding in a cornfield, after wheeling up 

 in the air, it breaks up into smaller parties, which dart off in 

 various directions for their homes — some across the seas, others 

 to the nearer caves. 



They seem to be migratory, to a certain extent in quest of 

 food, at seedtime and harvest, if, as is often the case, the island 

 crops are a little earlier than those on the mainland. Then our 

 fields are covered with those petty plunderers, and at night the 

 caves are filled with roosting birds, which remain about the island 

 as long as food is very plentiful, and then decamp. I think, 

 however, that individual birds are a good deal in the habit of 



1 See Vertebrate Fauna of the Outer Hebrides. D. Douglas, Edinburgh, 1888, 

 p. 113. In other districts of greater agricultural merit, however, the Rock Doves 

 constantly frequent the corn stubbles or barley stubbles of the interior, as at 

 Tantallon, the coasts of Berwickshire, &c, and in the Orkneys. — Ed. 



