182 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. 



droppings, and where the noise of wings when they rose at 

 morning or settled in the evening was like the sound of a 

 gigantic hailstorm on a frozen lake ! 



Compared to this our own native bird in its mild numbers 

 is surely a friend. Once, perhaps, long ago, he was too 

 numerous. Gilbert White writes, " I have consulted a sports- 

 man who tells me that fifty or sixty years back, when the 

 beechen woods were much more extensive than at present, 

 the number of wood pigeons was astonishing; that he has 

 often killed near twenty in a day ; and that with a long 

 fowling-piece he has shot seven or eight at a time on the 

 wing as they came wheeling overhead. He moreover adds, 

 which I was not aware of, that often there are amongst them 

 little parties of small blue doves which he calls rockiers. 

 The food of these numberless migrants was beechmast and 

 some acorns." 



To-day such gatherings as these are rare, as far as my 

 knowledge goes. Small flights of ten or twenty, or more 

 commonly still, a pair or two at a time, are about the usual 

 numbers visiting our enclosures and fields. Wherever woods 

 are, there will always be some, though they fly long distances 

 for food. 



Our English poets, who are deeply indebted to the pigeon 

 for a thousand metaphors, seem to have been quaintly "at 

 sea " with regard to the varieties of their favourite bird. 

 "Apart from the dove general," Mr. Phil. Robinson tells us 

 " the poets employ the dove particular the ring dove, the 

 stock dove, and the turtle dove. But what relation each 

 species bears to the other the poets never considered them- 

 selves at liberty to determine. Watts makes ' the turtle ' 

 the opposite sex of ' the dove ' ' no more the turtle leaves 

 the dove ' but allows at the same time by implication the 

 existence of a female turtle ; while Cowper makes it the 

 female, though elsewhere, with Spenser, making it the male. 

 Thomson uses the stock dove as the male of the turtle, Cowper 

 as the male of the ring dove, and Wordsworth as the female 



