42 AN EAST COAST NATURALIST 



sacred Palestine, and the associations of the bird 

 with what I had read and reread of him in the 

 Scriptures, encircled him with a halo of romance. 

 The levelling of the sand dunes by the golfer, and 

 the incursion of the railway, and many other 

 untoward circumstances, has entirely banished the 

 Turtle Dove. However, in the more wooded dis- 

 tricts it appears to be on the increase. 



I saw a Turtle Dove in 1882 that had been caged 

 for twelve years. Some beautiful hybrids between 

 Tumbler Pigeons and the Turtle Dove were produced 

 in the aviary of a resident several years in succession. 



NESTING OF SAND-MARTINS 



The last Sand-Martin's nest within the immediate 

 neighbourhood of the town was in 1881 placed in a 

 hole in a broken sandhill at the rear of an old wind- 

 mill on the North Denes, within a few yards of 

 where now stands the golf-house. It is strange that, 

 notwithstanding the increased traffic to and from 

 the Naval Reserve drill sheds, the persistency of 

 bird-nesting urchins, and the like, the birds persevered 

 in nesting there so late even as that. Other nesting 

 locations have been all but deserted in late years. 



