134 NATURE NEAR LONDON 



sunset in the early spring they all perched together 

 before finally retiring on the bare, slender tips of the tall 

 birch trees, exposed and clearly visible against the sky. 



Six once alighted in a row on a long birch branch, 

 bending it down with their weight like a heavy load of 

 fruit. The stormy sunset flamed up, tinting the fields 

 with momentary red, and their hollow voices sounded 

 among the trees. By May they had paired off, and each 

 couple had a part of the copse to themselves. Instead 

 of avoiding the house, they seemed, on the contrary, 

 to come much nearer, and two or three couples built 

 close to the garden. 



Just there, the wood being bare of undergrowth, there 

 was nothing to obstruct the sight but some few dead 

 hanging branches, and the pigeons or ringdoves could 

 be seen continually flying up and down from the ground 

 to their nests. They were so near that the darker mark- 

 ing at the end of the tail, as it was spread open to assist 

 the upward flight to the branch, was visible. Outside 

 the garden gate, and not more than twenty yards distant, 

 there stood three young spruce firs, at the edge of the 

 copse, but without the boundary. To the largest of 

 these one of the pigeons came now and then ; he was 

 half inclined to choose it for his nest. 



The noise of their wings as they rose and threshed 

 their strong feathers together over the tops of the trees 

 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 for- 

 wards, 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 



