STOCK DOVE. 9 



ticularly such as have been headed down, and have become 

 rugged and bushy at the top. Its German name Hohltaube, 

 or Hole-Dove, is similarly owing to the predilection for 

 hollow trees. In fact, the peculiar nesting habits of this 

 Dove are amongst its principal characteristics. In wooded 

 countries it generally selects elms, oaks, and willows — 

 especially pollards — and the hollows of beeches : frequently 

 making no nest but depositing its eggs upon the rotten 

 wood which has accumulated ; it also makes use of old 

 Crows' and Magpies' nests and squirrels' dreys, the matted 

 boughs of the Scotch fir, and ivy-grown trees and ruins. 

 In such situations as the foregoing its eggs may be found 

 even so near to London as Kichmond, Windsor, and 

 Cashiobury Parks, and generally throughout the wooded 

 southern counties of England. But in the open districts — 

 Norfolk and Suffolk — it occupies the deserted rabbit-burrows 

 upon warrens ; placing its eggs about a yard from the 

 entrance, generally upon the bare sand, sometimes using a 

 small quantity of dried roots, &c., barely sufficient to keep 

 the eggs from the ground. Besides such situations on the 

 heath, it nestles under thick furze bushes which are imper- 

 vious to rain in consequence of the sheep and rabbits eating 

 off the young and tender shoots as they grow ; the birds 

 always preferring those bushes that have a small opening 

 made by the rabbits near the ground.* The young, which 

 are ready for the table early in June, are stated by Professor 

 Newton to be a source of considerable profit to the warreners, 

 whose perquisites they are ; and in consequence almost every 

 warrener keeps a " dowe-dawg," i.e., a dog trained to 

 discover the burrows in which the Doves breed. f They 

 also breed in the rabbit-burrows of the Lincolnshire coast 

 and of Walney Island, Lancashire. But the nesting pecu- 

 liarities of the Stock Dove do not end here. Mr. Harting 

 (Zoologist, 1867, p. 758) relates how a pair bred for several 

 seasons on a crossbeam in the old spire of Kingsbury 

 Church, and the young birds, which he took and reared, 



* J. D. Salmon, Loudon's Mag. Nat. H. ix. p. 520. 

 f Stevenson, Birds of Norfolk, i. p. -356. 

 VOL. III. C 



