THE RING-DOVE. 7 



cherries, but he has often seen them pluck gooseberries and currants 

 from the bushes. In other gardens around Belfast the same 

 bad report is given of ring-doves being destructive to these fruits. 

 In some places they confine their attention to the currants so long 

 as these last, and then pay their respects to the gooseberries, not 

 waiting in either case for the ripeness of the fruit : thirty-seven 

 large gooseberries have been taken from the crop of one bird. 

 They are said to alight on the bushes, from which the fruit is 

 shaken by their weight, and afterwards to pick up from the 

 ground, what has fallen. At a very early hour in the morning 

 they visit the gardens, and take their departure on the approach of 

 the gardener — the protector of the fruit. Though keensighted 

 and suspicious of danger, they do not always escape punishment, 

 A relative living in the well- wooded district jnst alluded to, is so 

 wroth against these birds that he has sacrificed many — occa- 

 sionally four or five at a shot — by firing at them from his parlour 

 and drawing-room windows, as they afforded him an opportunity 

 when innocently feeding on beech-mast. One of these birds, which 

 was weighed, proved to be 17-£ ounces. About Carnlough, on 

 the coast of Antrim, where gardens are but few, ring-doves are 

 accused of doing much injury to the bean-fields : — in spring, by 

 picking up the beans exposed after being sown, and in autumn, by 

 attacking them in the pods. Nearly a hundred small beans have 

 been found in one bird. They feed much on the sea-shore in that 

 district. I have often, too, particularly when out shooting at a very, 

 early hour of the morning, raised little parties of these birds from 

 the gravelly or sandy beach of Holywood Warren, Belfast bay ; 

 saline matter being probably the attraction. The fondness of the 

 tame pigeon for salt is well known, and even the turtle-dove is 



down upon their breasts on the grain, and using their wings as flails, they beat out 

 the pickles from the heads and then proceed to eat them. The consequence is, that 

 the pickles having been thrashed out upon a matting of straw, a great proportion of 

 them fall down through it to the ground, and are lost even to the wood-pigeon ; in 

 short, they do uot eat one particle for twenty which they thrash from the stalk. I 

 have repeatedly watched this process from behind the trunk of a large willow-tree 

 growing in a thick-set hedge on the edge of a wheat-field, and seen the operation go 

 on within a couple of yards of me.'j — Observations on " Game and the Game 

 Laws," by J. Burn Murdoch, p. 11. (1847.) 



