WILD LIFE IN WINTER. 291 



humped up, miserable bunches of black feathers. 

 They hunt the roads, the fields, and the farmyards 

 to little purpose, for sparrows are very numerous and 

 very hungry. 



Owing to the severity of the weather last winter, 

 the wood-pigeons, or ring-doves, usually in such great 

 numbers, did not visit the woodlands for some time. 

 We had had a most fruitful mast season, both for oak 

 and beech, also a good wild fruit and berry time ; yet, 

 with the exception of the home-bred pigeons — I mean 

 wood-pigeons bred in the United Kingdom, a small 

 number, comparatively speaking — these birds were 

 scarce. They come sometimes late from their far- 

 away strongholds after eating up the provender there. 

 Four or five hundred miles is as nothing to them with 

 their strong, swift pinions. Some seasons, when the 

 acorn and beech-nut crops have been poor ones, I 

 have seen wide open cart-roads in the woods covered 

 with a vast army of pigeons, all eagerly seeking for 

 food, a moving, struggling, blue-grey mass of feathers. 

 The clap-clap-clap from that host of wings was like 

 the fall of some large tree which comes crashing 

 through the branches of others that surround it. 



The vexed question of the migratory movement 



