Ill 



PIGEON. 



EING DOVE. CUSHAT. QUEEST. 

 PLATE CXXXIV. - FIG. I. 



Columba palumbus, PEJfNAJJT. MOXTAGU. 



THE nest, wide and shallow, placed usually at a height of from 

 sixteen to twenty feet from the ground, is little more than a rude 

 platform of a few crossed sticks and twigs, the largest as the founda- 

 tion, so thinly laid together that the eggs or young may sometimes 

 be discovered from below. It is often built in woods and plantations, 

 but not unfrequently also in single trees, even those that are close 

 to houses, roads, and lanes, the oak and the beech, the fir or any 

 other suitable one, or even in ivy against a wall, rock, or tree, or 

 in a thick bush or shrub in a garden, or an isolated thorn, even 

 in the thick part, so that in flying out in a hurry, if alarmed, many 

 of the loosely-attached feathers are pulled out. One pair built in a 

 spruce fir not ten yards from a garden gate, where they were con- 

 stantly liable to disturbance by the ringing of the bell, and the 

 passing in and out of the members of the family. Another pair 

 dwelt two years in succession close to a window by a frequented walk, 

 and this, though a cat destroyed the young. 



The eggs, which are delicious eating, are two in number, pure 

 white, and of a rounded oval form; two and sometimes three broods are 

 produced in the season, but the third may possibly be only the con- 

 sequence of a previous one having been destroyed or prevented: the 

 eggs are hatched in sixteen or seventeen days. James Croome, Esq. 

 informs me that he once found three eggs in a nest. Since the 

 above was in type, my second son, Eeginald Frank Morris, found 

 three also in one nest in a wood near Londesborough, in the East- 

 Eiding. The young are fed from the bills of the parent birds with 



