154 NATURE NEAR LONDON. 



was often heard, and while in the garden one might 

 be watched approaching from a distance, swift as the 

 wind, then suddenly half-closing his wings and 

 shooting forwards, he alighted among the boughs. 

 Their coo is not in any sense tuneful ; yet it has a 

 pleasant association ; for the ringdove is pre-eminently 

 the bird of the woods and forests, and rightly named 

 the wood-pigeon. Yet though so associated with the 

 deepest and most lonely woods, here they were close 

 to the house and garden, constantly heard, and almost 

 always visible ; and London, too, so near. They 

 seemed almost as familiar as the sparrows and 

 starlings. 



These pigeons were new inhabitants ; but turtle- 

 doves had built in the copse since I knew it. They 

 were late coming the last spring I watched them ; but, 

 when they did, chose a spot much nearer the house 

 than usual. The turtle-dove has a way of gurgling the 

 soft vowels " oo " in the throat. Swallows do not 

 make a summer, but when the turtle-dove coos summer 

 is certainly come. One afternoon one of the pair flew 

 up into a hornbeam which stood beside the garden not 

 twenty yards at farthest. At first he sat upright on 

 the branch watching me below, then turned and flut- 

 tered down to the nest beneath. 



While this nesting was going on I could hear five 

 different birds at once either in the garden or from 

 any of the windows. The doves cooed, and every now 

 and then their gentle tones were overpowered by the 

 loud call of the wood-pigeons. A cuckoo called from 

 the top of the tallest birch, and a nightingale and a 

 brook-sparrow (or sedge-reedling) were audible together 



