THE WOODPIGEON 
THE woodpigeon is many things to 
many men. To the farmer, who has 
some claim to priority of verdict, it is a 
curse, even as the rabbit in Australia, the 
lemming in Norway, or the locust in Algeria. 
The tiller of the soil, whose business brings 
him in open competition with the natural 
appetites of such voracious birds, beasts, or 
insects, regards his rivals from a standpoint 
which has no room for sentiment ; and the 
woodpigeons are to our farmers, particularly 
in the well-wooded districts of the West 
Country, even as Carthage was to Cato the 
Censor, something to be destroyed. 
It is this attitude of the farmer which makes 
the woodpigeon pre-eminently the bird of 
February. All through the shooting season 
just ended, a high pigeon has proved an 
irresistible temptation to the guns, whether 
cleaving the sky above the tree-tops, doub- 
ling behind a broad elm, or suddenly swinging 
out of a gaunt fir. Yet it is in February, when 
other shooting is at an end and the coverts 
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