WILD PIGEONS 275 



crow approaches with triple croak. Few birds are 

 sharper of eye, and it is almost ludicrous to see the 

 aerial somersault he turns, when he discovers an ambush 

 and a pair of barrels right under him. Then the silence 

 is broken by the call of the partridge on a stubble 

 outside, summoning together the scant remnants of a 

 once big brood ; and as darkness settles down, the 

 low, cat-like whistle of the long-eared owl is a warning 

 that it is time to gather up the spoils and be off home. 



As winter merges into spring, we once more see, 

 towards the end of March, clean bright-plumaged pigeons, 

 clearly new-comers from afar, which, within a fortnight, 

 have completely replaced our grimier friends. These new- 

 comers are, in fact, our native cushats returning to 

 breed in the self-same woods where they were hatched ; 

 while simultaneously the winter packs which have afforded 

 the sport above described, withdraw to those regions 

 whence in late autumn they had come. 



But whence have the former come, and whither have 

 the others departed? Such questions long puzzled 

 inquirers, but can now be answered with some degree 

 of definition. Even my own limited experience abroad 

 points an answer at both ends. For in the south of 

 Spain, we have migrating cushats passing northwards 

 in conspicuous multitudes through our Andalusian shoot- 

 ing-grounds every March. They do not winter there ; it 

 is not far enough to the southward. But in March, 

 successive flights follow each other from Africa, resting 

 a day or two in our pine-forests of the Coto Donana. In 

 his Ornithology of the Straits of Gibraltar (p. 232), 

 Colonel Irby described the wood-pigeon as "swarming - " 

 in winter in Morocco, in such numbers that "it would 

 have been easy to shoot 100 in a day." These are the 



