Our Wild Pigeons. 29 



the same flock, which consisted of both species, showing 

 them to associate, at least during the winter, and when 

 after food. This, of course, is nothing new, and I only 

 speak of it to further say that in the Welsh bordering 

 shires the Stock- dove is far from rare, though scarce in 

 comparison with the King. In a flock of hundreds of 

 the latter, there may be tens of the former ; and he who 

 shot the four abovementioued tells me there seemed 

 about this proportion among those feeding in the bean- 

 field. 



Had the aforesaid field been some five miles farther 

 off, on the banks of the Wye, where it canons through 

 the carboniferous limestone at Symond's Yat, the Rock- 

 dove (G. livid) would, doubtless, have been also in the 

 flock. For there all the three species come together, as 

 it were, on common ground ; a singular fact, and of rare 

 occurrence in any other part of the kingdom. Like as 

 not, an odd Rock or two may have been among the 

 feeders in the bean-field, since they sometimes stray a 

 few miles inland from their roosting-place on the river 

 cliffs. 



The Rock-dove, so far as I have read, is represented 

 as only inhabiting along the coast-line, nesting in caves 

 and on the ledges of precipices that overhang the sea. 

 I had long suspected that this choice of habitat was not 

 due to any preference for salt water, but merely because 

 the sea cliffs offer the birds better security ; and if an 

 equally safe retreat were offered them inland they would 

 take to it. My conjecture has proved correct, and I am 

 now able to affirm that the Rock- dove dwells in the 

 riverine escarpments of the Wye, remote from any sea 

 shore. I have myself noted it as far inland as Hereford- 

 shire; but Mr. James W. Lloyd, of Kingston, an obser- 



