158 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
taken from the nest before, so to speak, they are 
weaned. Young bullfinches also, I believe, require 
a peculiar food produced by their parents only when 
having access to natural food. 
In the summer pigeons feed very freely on 
oak-galls—those pretty, round, translucent, green, 
vermilion-spotted globes about the size of a pea, 
from which come the flies that cause the brown 
oak spangles to be seen on the under sides of the 
fallen leaves in autumn, from which in turn shall 
come the larve to continue the cycle of gall-fly life. 
Much as I love bluebells, I cannot fancy their fat, 
green, three-sided seed-pods as food, yet wood- 
pigeons relish them. I have found in the crop of 
a pigeon so strange a mixture as wild strawberries 
and the seed-pods of bluebells. 
The fall of a good crop of beech-mast and acorns 
affords opportunity for excellent pigeon-shooting. 
But seldom is a big bag to. be made without a high 
wind—which likely enough is accompanied by rain 
—to make the pigeons fly low, and to concentrate 
their direction toward the most sheltered spot. 
Those who would enjoy the best of wood-pigeon 
shooting must be prepared to face any weather— 
the worse the weather, the better for getting shots 
at pigeons. Probably the reason why pigeon 
diphtheria is so prevalent in an acorn year is that 
it is spread by the afflicted birds distributing the 
germs through acorns, which they mouth, but 
