9238 Birds. 
standing below they are quite lost in the gloom. I have often landed’ 
in these caves, and although nests must have been abundant upon 
every side, I have seldom been able to get at them. The few within 
my reach have always been quite flat, and composed of grass, either 
dry or green, and sometimes in full flower. Well-feathered young 
birds and fresh eggs may frequently be found upon the same ledge. 
At harvest-time flocks of rock doves resort to the corn-fields, and there 
feed largely upon grain. Some persons, wishing to defend this beau- 
tiful bird from persecution, state most positively that it seeks its food 
only upon the ground, and therefore merely picks up that portion of 
the grain which would otherwise be wasted, but, as might have been 
expected, this statement has only had the effect of causing our 
numerous gunners to watch the bird more closely; by which means 
they have discovered what they never took the trouble to ascertain 
before—that it occasionally alights upon the sheaves themselves and 
devours the grain in large quantities. The result is that its enemies, 
having now established the charge, the species is rapidly becoming 
exterminated. In the crop of one bird, shot in the very act of robbing 
a sheaf, 1 have counted upwards of seven hundred grains of oats. Now 
even allowing that all these were taken directly from the sheaf, and 
that for one whole month it was the custom of each bird to procure 
its entire daily food in the same manner, no wise farmer would attempt 
to banish the doves from his fields without first ascertaining whether 
the damage done during that one month really counterbalanced the 
good service rendered during the other eleven months. A little trouble, 
although it might cause the death of a few birds, would convince him 
that even when a rock dove is feeding in the midst of abundance of 
grain, it almost invariably picks up in addition astonishing quantities 
of small seeds, and that, during the greater portion of the year, the 
seeds of various weeds, together with great numbers of roots, particu- 
larly those of the destructive Triticum repens, or couch grass, alone 
furnish it with the means of subsistence. The seeds which are most 
commonly found in the crop are those of Plantago maritima and 
Sinapis arvensis, and I have occasionally seen the bird picking at the 
ripe pods of Capsella bursa-pastoris. 
Dunlin.—Duulins were laying early in June, but sometimes the 
eggs are found about the second week of May. All the nests that I 
have seen have been situated among tall grass or heather, either in low 
meadows or upon peat moors, but it is not often that they occur very 
high above the sea-level. On the 18th of June I found three newly- 
hatched young birds, apparently not more than a day old, and beauti- 
