RINGDOVE OR WOOD PIGEON. 215 



of home-bred birds, which have fallen a sacrifice to the warfare 

 now urged against them. 



Although I cannot find in published records that either Professor 

 Macgillivray or Sir William Jardine two of our best authorities 

 on Scottish birds gives place to the idea of Wood Pigeons in this 

 country being augmented in their numbers by the arrival of mi- 

 gratory flocks, I believe that such will be found to be the true 

 reason why farmers have so much difficulty in extirpating them. 

 That a large yearly accession to the winter flocks takes place 

 through migration is, I think, evident from the fact that the 

 eastern counties only are affected by the increase; and that, looking 

 to the destruction of so many thousands in one year, no such 

 increase can reasonably be traced to the results of a single breeding 

 season. Some years ago, indeed, I was informed by Mr Alexander 

 Henderson, an observant bird student resident in East Lothian, 

 that he had repeatedly seen considerable flocks of Wood Pigeons 

 alighting on the coast near his house, evidently in a state of ex- 

 haustion. These birds, he remarked, were smaller and darker in 

 plumage than those hatched in the neighbouring woods, and he 

 was convinced, at the time of their appearance, that they were 

 migrants from other countries. Very soon after this information 

 was communicated to me, I witnessed a still more extraordinary 

 instance of foreign invasion on the sea-shore about three miles east 

 of Dunbar. I had gone out about daybreak, and was astonished 

 to see a prodigious cloud of pigeons fully a mile seawards, steering 

 for the nearest land. The entire body of birds alighted on the 

 sandy beach at Catcrag bay, which they completely covered between 

 the rocks near the limestone quarry and the opposite point in the 

 direction of the town. I am satisfied there must have been in the 

 flock twenty or thirty thousand pigeons, at the lowest computation ; 

 and, from the fact of their alighting immediately on reaching land 

 without any preliminary survey of the ground, I concluded they 

 had come in from a long journey. Their tameness on my approach 

 confirmed this conjecture, as I was allowed to put them up within 

 twelve or fifteen yards. The cloud slowly ascended, and a line 

 was formed, six or eight birds deep, which gradually drew off the 

 main body, forming a singular spectacle when viewed against the 

 morning sky, and almost realizing the descriptions of Wilson and 

 Audubon, when writing of the passenger pigeon of North America, 

 and its " five mile " processions in the air. 



