4 o SPRING 



Dover and the Isle of Wight ; and from this region they seem 

 to distribute themselves northward and westward until the 

 whole stock is provided with a home, and they push on no 

 further. As they become more plentiful owing to game- 

 preserving, or are displaced by building in such favourite 

 regions as the fringes of Epping Forest, there is a gradual 

 impulse to move forward, and they spread further into the 

 north and west. The same extension of range is far more 

 marked in the case of the turtle-dove. Turtle-doves also 

 enter England chiefly in the south-east and spread north- 



*@% 



TURTLE-DOVE 



wards and westwards throughout May. Except the starling 

 and the wood-pigeon, no inland bird has shown a more 

 striking colonising power in the last twenty years. Turtle- 

 doves are now common in many districts where they were 

 formerly hardly known, and are steadily pushing further. 

 Game-preserving has doubtless had much to do with it ; they 

 are a natural prey of the sparrow-hawk, and they are 

 specially fond of the belts of pheasant covert, which in the 

 southern counties are often seen fringing the wide stretches 

 of arable land where they feed. Farmers are apt to class 

 them with wood-pigeons as one of their curses ; but a 

 careful Hampshire observer states that the contents of 

 their crops show that they haunt ripening wheat-fields 



