CURIOUS CAPTURE OF PIGEONS 219 



pigeons. The man's astonishment may be more easily conceived 

 than described when, on his footstep crunching on the frosted 

 leaves and hard ground, he suddenly felt himself under a shower, 

 not of frogs or little fishes, but of good fat wood-pigeons, the 

 birds tumbling on his head and running about his legs incapable 

 of flying. Having an eye to plunder thus cast in his way by 

 Providence, he set about kicking and catching right and left till 

 he had wrung the necks of and collected more birds than he 

 could carry away in a sack. The fact was the feathers of the 

 pigeons, thoroughly wetted by the mist in the early part of the 

 night, particularly the long wing-feathers farthest from the heat 

 of the body, the ends of which when at roost rest upon the tail, 

 had frozen fast in the morning frost, or at least fast enough to 

 prevent an immediate flight. The quists, 1 ignorant of the 

 circumstance, when suddenly frightened by the shepherd, sprung 

 from the boughs on which they sat, but failing in their expected 

 flight, they fell to the ground and were captured. Facts are 

 thus again more strange than fiction, and we need go no further 

 than the truth to find matter for marvel. 



Great quantities of plovers breed around Heron Court, as 

 well as snipes. While fishing for pike in the early spring it is 

 curious to hear the male snipe as he flies on high like a swift, 

 trumpeting or bleating over his mate. The noise reaching the 

 fisherman's ear is something between the bleat of the sheep or 

 the lamb and goat, and is made by the wings of the bird in 

 particular darts or dips of his flight. The New Forest resounds 

 with the noise during that season of the year. 



1 The ringdove is called quist or queesh in the south of England, a 

 survival of the Anglo-Saxon name cusceote, whence our " cushat." ED. 



