ROCK-DOVE. 249 



Habits. The late Dr. Saxby has given the following account 

 of the habits of the Rock-Dove in the Shetlands : 



"It is not very difficult to approach under ordinary 

 circumstances, and, when feeding in flocks among stubble, is 

 so intent upon its work as to allow the shooter to walk 

 boldly up within range; but in neighbourhoods where it is 

 often disturbed it is fully as shy as the Wood-Pigeon. It is 

 easy to shoot the Doves as they fly in and out of their caves ; 

 but the practice is dangerous, from the risk one runs of 

 shaking down loose fragments of stone, as well as cruel, on 

 account of the impossibility of entering the caves in any but 

 the calm weather of the more genial seasons of the year, when, 

 of course, the birds are breeding. 



" The Rock-Dove feeds in company with various other 

 species, such as Redwings, Twites, Buntings, and tame 

 Pigeons ; and it is owing to the latter circumstance that 

 parti-coloured birds are so frequently met with in the flocks. 

 In winter, during hard frost, it descends to the shingly beaches, 

 where it picks up small seeds among the weathered plants 

 above high-water mark. 



"It is difficult to convince farmers that at least it does some 

 little good. But in this case, as in all other similar cases, the 

 wisest course is merely to give a simple, unprejudiced record of 

 facts, leaving truth to work its own way, as it inevitably will in 

 the end. To state that any living thing is probably useful to 

 mankind, is but to divide one's hearers into two classes, the one 

 clamouring for its extermination, the other prepared to protect 

 it to an injurious extent ; and a precisely similar result would 

 have been sure to follow an opinion that it was useless or hurtful. 

 When its enemies see it upon the sheaves, they at once begin 

 to argue as if this were its constant habit all the year round, 

 and they enter into the most intricate calculations as to the 

 probable number of bushels thus consumed during the twelve 

 months. Similarly, its would-be friends are triumphant when, 

 on opening the crop of a Rock-Dove shot in a stubble field, 

 some considerable time after the corn has been cleared, it is 

 found to be filled with the seeds and roots of noxious weeds, 

 with merely a few grains of oats or barley intermixed, quite 

 overlooking the fact, that had the grain been abundant the 

 weeds would have been despised, as indeed I have ascertained 



