514 THE PIGEONS 



the years 1876-79, 15,194 eggs, 1603 young birds, and 3733 old birds 

 were destroyed, a total of 20,529. The amount of money expended as 

 head-tax was 117, 13s. 3d. Similarly, the United East Lothian Agri- 

 cultural Society, about forty years ago, over a period of about seven 

 years, caused to be destroyed about 130,000 pigeons ; but since 1870 

 the numbers of wood-pigeons in Scotland appears to have been materi- 

 ally decreased. Happily this bird affords most excellent eating, so 

 that the slain can be utilised. Wherever their numbers increase 

 sufficiently to demand drastic thinning operations, it is found more 

 easy to attack them as they come home to roost than to endeavour to 

 take them by surprise in the open. They always fly head to wind, and 

 hence the guns must be placed accordingly. Mr. Abel Chapman, in 

 his delightful Bird Life of the Borders, gives elaborate directions for 

 such raids, and he further remarks that they vary their roosting-places 

 according to the weather. In his own county a favourite spot was an 

 old beech wood standing on high ground, and much exposed. But 

 during rough or stormy weather they resorted to a low-lying wood of 

 tall Scots firs. I have had many opportunities of studying these birds 

 in Battersea Park, London, and note that, in the winter, when the 

 trees are bare so as to reveal their movements, they congregate in 

 considerable numbers, in certain parts, on the outskirts of the park, 

 during the afternoon, then, as dusk falls, they betake themselves, 

 gradually, to the trees on an island in the centre of a small lake. 



In the matter of its plumage the wood-pigeon presents no very 

 striking characters, but there is one peculiarity which I do not 

 remember to have seen described anywhere. This refers to the 

 arrangement of the feathers of the white neck patch and those 

 immediately above, which have the appearance of being distributed 

 in semicircular rows, divided by well-defined transverse spaces, thus 

 recalling the longitudinal grooves down the necks of geese. 



Of their habits during courtship, Mr. Edmund Selous writes : 

 " The male . . . bows to the female lengthways along the branch on 

 which he is sitting, elevating the tail at the same time, in just the 



