The Stock Dove. BZ 
leaving its breeding haunts about the end of 
October. 
The Stock Dove is fourteen inches in length from 
the tip of the beak to the end of the tail, and its 
stretch of wing is twenty-six inches. Its general 
colouring is bluish-grey. The head, wings, and back 
are of this colour, and the tail is the same, but 
tipped with leaden grey. Some dark spots on the 
wing feathers form an irregular bar across the 
wing, whilst the sides of the neck are glossy, 
iridescent green. The top of the breast is of a 
delicate wine-red hue, on account of which the bird 
has received the scientific name enas, from the 
Greek oivos—wine. 
The female, as is the case in most of the pigeon 
family, is smaller and less brilliant than the male, 
but otherwise resembles her mate. Young birds, 
before their first moult, may be distinguished from 
older birds by the absence of the metallic colour on 
the neck. 
It was once erroneously supposed that this bird 
was the parent stock, from which our domestic 
pigeons sprang, and hence some thought that it 
had thus acquired the name of Stock Dove. But it 
undoubtedly received its name from the habit of 
nesting in the stocks or trunks of trees. The rock 
pigeon (Columba livia) is, without doubt, the 
