276 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS 



birds that pass through Spain in March and some of 

 which come to breed in this country in April. 



Again, looking northwards, I found wood-pigeons 

 nesting in vast numbers in the great forest-regions of 

 south and central Sweden, and they are equally abundant 

 throughout the other Baltic countries ; though abso- 

 lutely unknown there in winter. The arrival of cushats 

 in these parts occurs at the end of March, coinciding 

 with their disappearance from England ; while they all 

 quit Scandinavia by the end of October, or early in 

 November — being the precise date when they are due 

 here, as above described. Our home-breeding cushats 

 may thus be said to winter in Morocco, while our packs 

 of winter pigeons breed in Sweden. 1 



Since the early eighties, we have had an addition 

 to the variety of wild-pigeon shooting throughout the 

 Borderland, in the appearance of the stockdove, which 

 formerly was totally unknown here. Out of some thou- 

 sands of wood-pigeons killed at Silksworth during twenty 

 winters, there was not a single stockdove until 1879, when 

 we got one, which was regarded as quite a rarity. The 

 following winter three or four were obtained, but in the 

 winter of 1884-85 they became quite numerous. Of fifty- 

 three wild pigeons shot at Christmas-time, no less than 

 five were stockdoves, and many others were seen with 

 them. During the subsequent months of January and 



1 A correspondent in Sweden says that stockdoves reach Wermland by 

 mid-March — a fortnight before the cushats — and breed in May, quite 

 abundantly, in hollow trees among oak and alder woods. They disappear 

 in September — again a month before the cushats. The latter arrive at the 

 end of March and nest by thousands in the vast pine-forests of the interior ; 

 whence, in September, they descend to feed for a month or six weeks on the 

 rye and oat-stubbles, and finally leave the country at the end of October, 

 neither species ever wintering in Sweden. 



