WOOD-PIGEONS AND WILD-FOWL 157 
selves simultaneously on either side of the tree, 
some tricky shooting may be enjoyed. In this 
way two of my brothers bagged thirty pigeons in 
a couple of hours. 
When there is no corn available the diet of 
wood-pigeons is as extraordinary as it is varied. 
During the latter part of the winter, when root- 
greens are scarce, and before the sowing of the 
spring corn, pigeons will stuff themselves with the 
tops of vetches, clover, and dandelions. When the 
corn-feast is over, they will fill their crops with the 
curious-stick-like roots of the wild anemones. Soon 
after the beeches break into leaf you will notice 
that they are much frequented by pigeons, which 
feed gluttonously on their green tassel-like flowers. 
I have seen the branches of an early-flowering beech 
bowed down by a crowd of guzzling pigeons, so 
thick that they jostled each other. When charlock 
is about to bloom—that is, when the spring corn is 
ankle-high—pigeons really do good by gorging 
themselves on its buds. It is interesting to note 
that pieces of charlock buds are the first food I have 
found in the crops of very young wood-pigeons, in 
addition to their parents’ milk. I know that many 
people will smile at the mention of pigeon’s milk, 
yet a section of a parent pigeon's crop seems not to 
be different to a section of a doe rabbit that is 
suckling young. Probably lack of the’ parental 
milk explains why one cannot hand-rear pigeons 
