154 WOOD PIGEON. 



The Wood Pigeon is very good eating, except when in 

 the winter it feeds on turnip-tops, and then a disagreeable 

 flavour is imparted to it. When they come home to roost 

 in their accustomed trees in fir plantations, or tall oaks, ash, 

 or other trees in woods, by lying in wait below they are 

 easily to be procured, but in the open day they are shy, and 

 not easily approached, unless it may be when engaged with 

 their young. They are capable of being tamed if brought 

 up from the nest, and have even been known to shew some 

 personal attachment, perching on the head or shoulders of 

 their friend, and eating out of the hand. I have seen them 

 more than once kept in cottages, and sadly out of their 

 element they have seemed. They have not flown away in 

 some instances even when at liberty to do so. 



The late Frederick Holme, Esq., of Corpus Christi College, 

 Oxford, wrote in the 'Zoologist,' page 1025, 'One of a pair, 

 kept in a cage, having made its escape, liberty was given 

 to the other; but it continued about the grounds, at first 

 descending warily from a tree to take the food left on the 

 ground, then feeding from the hand from the lower branches, 

 till at length it became so perfectly tame and familiar that 

 it tapped with its bill at the window, and would come, 

 though with caution, into the sitting-room.' 



Of another, tamed from the nest, the Rev. J. C. Atkinson 

 writes in the 'Zoologist,' page 661, 'When the evening 

 approached I went to seek for him, and proceeded to call 

 him by whistling the call I used when I fed him. He 

 instantly responded, and flew to my shoulder or head, and 

 was taken in for the night. Occasionally I neglected to do 

 so until long after his roosting-hour, but he never once 

 refused to come when I called him; at last I left him out 

 all night. He then roosted in some fir trees about a stone's 

 cast from the house. No sooner did I make ny appearance 

 in the garden in the morning than I was sure to see him 

 come flying to me for his breakfast; and at any time in 

 the day, if I omitted to feed him at the s:ated intervals, 

 he came to remind me of my neglect as som as he saw 

 me. Soon after he was regularly turned out ia the day-time, 

 I had taken him to the bed of peas, and there indulged 

 him with the green peas, of which he was ptrticularly fond; 

 but he did not like the trouble of shelling tlem for himself; 

 and if he saw me in that part of the garcen, and was at 

 all hungry, he generally flew first to me aid then to the 



