462 LETTERS TO YOUNG SHOOTERS 



round its neck, and its large size, is so well known. It 

 is this bird that visits us in such countless hordes, and 

 is increasing in numbers every year.* Though we have 

 them always resident with us, they are much aug- 

 mented from abroad ; the great flights that appear so 

 suddenly in England in October and November either 

 come from Scotland or the Continent. The wood- 

 pigeon lays twice in the year, in April and June. 

 The female bird is slightly the smaller, and has not 

 the same beautiful glossy violet and green neck as the 

 male, and is in consequence sometimes mistaken for 

 another species by a shooter. From 100 to 120 wood- 

 pigeons are often shot in a day in our islands by a 

 single shooter particularly in the north and 011 a 

 few occasions nearly two hundred have been killed in 

 a day by one gun. 



(2) The STOCK DOVE is resident with us, and fre- 

 quents our woods in fair numbers, more especially in the 

 southern and midland counties, but never in such 

 large flights as the woodpigeon. It nests in the cliffs 

 of the sea coast in a few parts of England, and very 

 numerously inland, especially in stumps of trees, and 

 in bushes and ivy-covered walls. It is generally this 

 bird that dashes with such a fluster out of some old 



* This is owing to the present high preserving of game, the de- 

 struction of hawks, and the quiet of our large woods, save during a 

 few days' covert shooting, not to speak of the difficulty of reducing 

 woodpigeons by the gun to any noticeable extent. The only method 

 of destroying the birds in large numbers is by the use of the ' cage ' 

 described in Letter XX. (First Series), by the aid of which I have 

 known a keeper capture over a thousand woodpigeons in one winter. 



