At Home with-^Wild Nature 



I mentally registered the bird a stock dove, because 

 the species breeds more or less plentifully in holes in the 

 walls of isolated old stone barns in the neighbourhood. 



Going that way one day in a climb to the foothills of 

 a peak, where the golden plover breeds, I made a call, 

 and was considerably surprised to see a ring dove or 

 wood pigeon, fly out. She had a nest containing one 

 egg, not in the clustering branches of the mountain ash, 

 however, but on a ledge in the cliff where a ring ouzel 

 might have been expected to build. The nest was made 

 of dead bracken stalks, and is the only instance I have 

 ever known of a wood pigeon building in a cliff. 

 Curiously enough there were plenty of suitable trees 

 available within half a mile of the place. 



Birds do reverse things a bit sometimes in their 

 household affairs, however, as I have found a dipper 

 nesting in a tree, and on one occasion a blackbird trying 

 a partridge situation on the ground, far away from a 

 bush of any kind whatsoever. 



The illustration facing page 95 shows the foot of a 

 famous bird ghyll in Fell-land, where I have spent many 

 long and happy days with sparrow-hawks, merlins, 

 kestrels, grouse, blackcock, hill partridges, wood 

 pigeons, ring ouzels, missel thrushes, dippers, sand- 

 pipers, wood wrens, brown wrens, and other feathered 

 lovers of quiet corners of the earth, far away from the 

 clang and rattle of human activity. 



For the best part of a mile the left bank of this ghyll 

 consists of stone-fenced pastures covered with good 

 heather, whilst the right knows nothing but stunted 



