138 WOOD PIGEONS ANCIENT NEST. 



the oaks. Windy and boisterous evenings in No- 

 vember, are most appropriate to the sport of shoot- 

 ing wood-pigeons, which always roost with their 

 faces to windward, and the gunners guardedly ap- 

 proaching behind them, hidden by the remaining 

 foliage, and aided by the murmuring of the wind, 

 obtain a fair chance of success, though the ring-dove 

 is particularly shy and watchful. This is a sport for 

 a company of gunners, each chusing a different stand 

 in the twilight, by which plan, taking the birds sit- 

 ting or flying, the bags may be well filled. As the 

 game is large, short guns and heavy shot are the 

 best adapted. The flesh of the wood-pigeon is in 

 perfection in the latter summer and the autumnal 

 months, from their ability in those seasons, to obtain 

 the best food. During winter, feeding on cole worts 

 or any green food they can find, their flesh is loose 

 and bitter. From their large size, which would be 

 increased by domestication, the experiment might 

 be successful. At Pamber, Hants, there had been 

 immemorially, an annual nest of wood-pigeons in a 

 large yew-tree, said to be three centuries old, which 

 grew in the garden within a few yards of the house. 

 We seldom saw the old birds, which used the ut- 

 most vigilance. We were well supplied with them 

 from the neighbouring forest. In 1827, immense 

 flocks of wood-pigeons, to the computed number of 

 two thousand in one field, were seen upon the lands 

 near Chichester. Sir H. Fisher's keeper killed 

 sixty couple in one day. 



But both in the ancient and modern world, this 

 beautiful and variegated genus of birds has been 



