162 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 



pigeon's crop the better. So tightly will pigeons 

 pack their crops with greens that on occasion they 

 must afford the birds considerable protection from 

 shot. I have fired at a pigeon flying over me with 

 no other visible effect than to cause a shower of 

 greens from its punctured crop. To illustrate the 

 quantity of greens a pigeon will 'stuff' into its crop, 

 Gilbert White relates in * Selborne ' how a wood- 

 pigeon was served up, accompanied by a dish of the 

 most delicious turnip-greens, taken from its crop. 



Many a time I have supplied my fowls with a 

 meal of grain emptied from the crops of pigeons I 

 had shot. A keeper acquaintance one autumn was 

 waiting for pigeons which fed on some barley 

 stubble ; and to pass away the intervals between 

 the arrivals of the birds, he counted the grains of 

 barley in the crop of one pigeon. There were a 

 thousand and thirty-three, besides a few small snail- 

 shells. 



Foggy weather brings a famous chance to get in 

 touch with wood-pigeons. The shooting, of course, 

 is not so difficult as in clear weather not so much 

 because the birds fly slower, but because you are 

 able to kill a pigeon coming towards you before it 

 sees you. In clear weather this seldom is possible. 

 It is that backwards, forwards, downwards, upwards, 

 lightning swerve of the wood-pigeon in clear weather 

 that beats so many men, and has beaten me a great 

 many more times than I care to remember. The 



