The Ringdove is an early breeder, often beginning to lay in the last few 

 days of March. I have two very early records of Ringdove's nests containing 

 eggs, one on the gth of March and one on the nth, and I have frequently 

 seen nests containing eggs in the last week of that month. The favourite site 

 for the Ringdove's nest is in some thick spruce fir-tree in a plantation, the nest 

 being usually placed close against the trunk of the tree. Almost every kind 

 of tree is used as a nesting-site, and a favourite place is among the masses of 

 twigs which are often seen round the lowest branches of a lime-tree. It is 

 sometimes built in the ivy which covers some ruined tower or church. The 

 same nest is often tenanted year after year, being added to and strengthened 

 each spring. 



The nest is rudely made, being merely a flat platform of twigs, generally 

 those of the birch, and sometimes so loosely put together that the eggs are 

 distinctly visible from below ; sometimes it is built on an old Squirrel's drey 

 or on a deserted nest of a Sparrow-hawk or Crow. 



The eggs are two in number, never more, but sometimes only one is laid. 

 They are oval in shape, and of a glossy white, with a very smooth polished 

 shell. They vary in length from 17 to i'5 inch, and in breadth from 

 1*40 to i -15 inch. 



Both birds take their turn in incubating the eggs, and when the young 

 are hatched the old birds are kept busy from sunrise to sunset in supplying 

 the voracious appetites of the nestlings. The young birds grow very slowly, 

 and pick the semi-digested food from the mouths of their parents, who eject 

 it from their crops. As soon as the young can fly, the old birds set about 

 building another nest, three broods being sometimes reared in the year. It 

 is no uncommon thing to find nests of the Ringdove containing fresh eggs as 

 late as the middle of August, and I took a pair of eggs which were perfectly 

 fresh from a nest in a lime-tree near Callander on the 2nd of September . 



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