154 NATUitE 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 " 00 " 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 nov/ 

 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 



