STOCK-DOVE. 491 



F. Boyes, who states that the bird has no doubt increased 

 and spread over all parts of the county within recent years, 

 but it existed on the extreme unenclosed tracts of the East 

 Riding long previously. 



Prior to 1864 it was numerous in all the old warren grounds, 

 more so than at any subsequent period ; for about that time 

 the reclamation and bringing under cultivation of the warrens 

 was commenced, and, with high farming and breaking up 

 of the soil, the Stock-Doves were dispersed and driven out 

 to find other haunts. At first, being loth to leave, they 

 nested on the outskirts of the warrens under furze-bushes, 

 amongst roots in old pits, or in holes about the roots of 

 trees, and this habit of adapting itself to its surroundings, 

 and finding a nesting site almost anywhere, is the cause 

 of its wide distribution in the breeding season. Old warreners 

 were still alive when this subject was investigated, and their 

 evidence, extending to so far back as 1820, was to the effect 

 that the " Blue Rock," as they termed the bird, was very 

 numerous then, breeding in the rabbit burrows, and they always 

 claimed the young ones as their perquisites. Thus it is clearly 

 shewn that our old writers, Allis and Strickland, had no know- 

 ledge of these warren birds. It is reasonable to presume 

 that most parts of the county have been populated by these 

 evicted tenants of the warrens, and it is highly interesting to 

 know that, at a period when the bird was almost, if not quite, 

 unknown in every other portion of Yorkshire, it should 

 be so common on the Wolds, and that, with the gradual 

 enclosure of these waste tracts, there was a simultaneous 

 spread of the bird over the county. 



A correspondent of the Field of I2th May 1877, called 

 attention to the sudden increase of the Stock-Dove near York ; 

 in 1865 it is described as rarely visiting the foot of the southern 

 Wolds, and it only established itself in the Malton, Lowthorpe, 

 and Flamborough districts about the same time. The late 

 Canon Atkinson (" Moorland Parish," p. 347) recorded it 

 as very rare at Danby in 1846-47, when he noticed the first 

 example there, whilst lower down the Esk Valley, and at 

 Whitby, it did not appear until the " fifties." 



