THE RING DOVE, OR CUSHAT. 



tolumba Palumbus, Linn^us; Le Pigeon Ramier, Buffon; Die Riogeltaube, 

 Bechstein. 



This is the largest of the European wild pigeons, being in 

 length seventeen inches and a half. Some naturalists suppose 

 this to be the parent stock of our large domestic pigeons ; but 

 it cannot be domesticated so easily as the stock dove, and never 

 mixes with the common pigeons in the fields. It does not, 

 moreover, retire into hollows, like these, but lives and builds 

 in open and exposed places. The beak is reddish white ; the 

 iris is pale yellow ; the shanks are reddish ; the head and throat 

 are dark ash grey ; the front of the neck and the breast are 

 pui'plish ash grey ; the sides and back of the neck are fine 

 iridescent purple ; an almost crescent- shaped white streak 

 adorns the sides of the neck towards the base, without quite 

 sun-ounding it ; the belly, the vent, and the thighs, are very 

 pale grey ; the sides are light ash grey ; the upper part of the 

 back, the scapulars, and the lesser wing- coverts, are light 

 brownish ash grey ; the coverts of the primary quUl-feathers 

 are black ; the remaining greater coverts are pale ash grey ; the 

 tail is dark ash grey, deepening into black at the extremity. 



In the female the streaks on the sides of the neck are not so 

 wide as in the male ; her breast is paler, and all the wing- 

 coverts are an obscure grey. 



Habitation. — This species, found in Europe and Asia within the tem- 

 perate zone, is very common in the woods of Gennany and Britain: it 

 quits us the beginning of October, in small flights, and does not return 

 till the middle of March, and sometimes later, always some weeks after the 

 stock dove. During harvest it frequents small groves and detached thickets, 

 to be neaier the corn fields. 



