BRONZE-WINGED OR EMERALD DOVE 125 



Hills, and less often would also sometimes see them eating raspberries 

 and blackberries from the bushes which grew in profusion in almost 

 any open glade or roadway. 



Their flight, as already noted, is extremely swift, and at the same 

 time wonderfully silent, and it is often quite startling the way these 

 birds flit into sight and then disappear without a sound, twisting and 

 turning so as to avoid bushes and other obstacles in their flight. 

 Invariably they keep low down, and it is rare to see them rise twenty 

 feet from the ground even when they dash across some opening in the 

 forest or are hustled across a wide roadway from one patch of forest 

 to another. 



Their note is a soft but very deep and rather plaintive coo, and 

 during the breeding-season they may often be heard calling to one another 

 for some minutes together. They are not gregarious, and except when 

 actually nesting single birds seem to be more often seen even than pairs, 

 but in some favourite spots half a dozen or more may sometimes 

 gather together. In spite however of its solitary habits it is not, I 

 think, for a member of this family, at all a quarrelsome bird, and it 

 can be kept quite safely as a rule with other birds, either of its own or 

 other species. 



It thrives in captivity, but does not seem often to be caged in 

 India, though one may meet with such specimens occasionally in the 

 Calcutta and other big bazaars. 



It has a curious habit of entering and passing through buildings, 

 which, doubtless, it hopes will afford refuge from the glare of the sun ; 

 but finding the interior so different from what it expects, it passes 

 straight through instead of resting. Two or three writers have com- 

 mented on this curious habit of entering buildings, and it will some- 

 times even dash through a tea-factory in which many people are working 

 and where the noise of machinery is continuous and loud. 



