THE WOOD-PIGEON 518 



hulks, and seeds . picked up from the freshly sown drills . . . 

 clover, seeds of the wild mustard. charlock, dock and ragweed, 

 an. I \arious other I.enie- - ,,!.. . m .l j.l.miv The 

 qualification " chicllx appended t> sm-h a list. lca\ - <>m- curious to 

 know how tin- rest of tin- diet is made up! Hut it is clear that the 

 wood-pigeon is not entire!) harmful, as some would have us helie\e. 

 Mr. Nelson himself remarks : ' "In districts where it is not particularly 

 numerous it probably does not harm the farmers' crops, but even 

 In -nctitM them, as, for instance, when unkindly weather in spring has 

 arrested the growth of some of the white corn crops, allowing the 

 hardy wild mustard to overtop the tender blade, the pigeon destroys 

 the weed by stripping it of every leaf, and often the lowly duckweed 

 furnishes it with an abundant repast" In the London parks, when 

 this bird is abundant, I have frequently seen them, in the spring, 

 feeding greedily on the young buds of plane trees, creeping as near 

 to the end of the bough as possible, and craning their necks down 

 to get at the end twigs just beyond them. The capacity of the crop, 

 which has a peculiar bi-lobed shape, is astonishing. As many as 

 sixty-one ttoetPB have been taken from one such receptacle, from 

 another seventy-three hazel-nuts. When a large flock is feeding, 

 Mr. Abel Chapman tells us, 3 "among turnip fields, stubbles, or clover 

 lea, they alternately feed and rest on the nearest trees, the birds in 

 the latter position serving as sentries, whether purposely or by 

 accident" ; and, he continues, "a big pack of cushats on the feed can 

 be made out a long way off by the habit of the rearmost birds con- 

 tinually flying up and alighting in the front rank, thus causing constant 

 movement" 



Reference has already been made to the enormous increase in 

 numbers of the wood-pigeon, all over the kingdom, during the last 

 century. A few figures may help to make this fact more readily 

 apparent Viscount Reidhaven, at the Central Banflshire Farmers 

 Club, so far back as 1879, stated that on his father's estate, between 



t Op.nl., p. 91. mrdLtftoftfu Bordert, 2nd edit., p. 2. 



