on Devotion.



255



weather stopped it. But, nesting or no, the old barn was still their

favourite retreat, and always, after feeding was finished, they would

fly back there and disappear in its recesses. And here we may

explain that all our birds have been on war rations ; that is to say,

the feeding is done most carefully and not in the liberal way of

better days. Only just so much food is given as a careful estimate

shows will provide each bird with a cropful at each feeding, and the

birds have been in perfect health, as indeed birds always are on this

system.


In the opening days of March the Blue Bocks began again to

nest. The nest, of course, was somewhere up near the roof of the

old barn, but in those dim recesses no one could say exactly where

it was. The weather of that time we all remember, and it seemed

very doubtful whether this second venture would meet with any

better success. The birds evidently sat for a time (pigeons sit

alternately), but as both were seen off the nest together now and

then, they seemed to have given it up, though as the keeper of the

pigeons was absent from home for some days, they were not very

carefully watched. On his return the pigeons were about as usual,

taking their food and flying back to the barn just in their accustomed

way. On the last day of March, a Saturday, they were to be seen

sitting side by side on a window-sill looking much bunched up and

unhappy with the cold, for it was a bitter day with showers of driven

snow. On Palm Sunday morning, April 1st, they took their food as

usual, flew back to their barn, and—were never seen again. Sunday

passed and Monday, Tuesday came, and yet the calls to feeding

brought no Blue Rocks; Tweetie and his mate were missing, and

things were very sad.


That day the snow lay thick upon the ground. In the course

■of the morning someone looking from a window suddenly cried that

Tweetie had come back ! So indeed it really seemed, for there,

sitting in the snow, close to the aviary, was a Blue Rock-pigeon !

The Modena pigeons in the aviary were in a state of great excite¬

ment, flying about and cooing all the time. But it was not Tweetie

.and what do you think it was ? It was a young Blue Rock, perfect

in feathering, but the yellow down still upon its head. More

strange still, inside the aviary was a second youngster, who had



