WOOD-PIGEONS AND WILD-FOWL 161 
he had brought me, I declared peace till the follow- 
ing season. 
Wood - pigeons, much to the credit of their 
digestive powers, eat many hazel-nuts, shell and 
all. I have seen thirty-eight fine nuts in the crop 
of one pigeon. When acorns are scarce and nuts 
numerous, pigeons give rather novel shooting as 
they flap up from grubbing for nuts among the dead 
leaves. And they are easier to shoot then, in the 
same way that a walked-up partridge is easier than 
a driven one; of course, they are still quite easy 
enough to miss. Another point in favour of this 
kind of shooting is that you keep walking round the 
rides of a wood, and are spared even cold feet. 
Cold feet, and cold fingers—that is the worst of 
most forms of winter pigeon-shooting. In winter 
huge flocks of home-bred pigeons, augmented by 
thousands of visitors, feast on the greens of roots, 
preferring those of rape and turnips. But unless 
root-fields are few and far between, or snow covers 
other food, the thousands of pigeons which may rise 
from a field on your arrival are not likely to return 
often enough to make it worth while waiting ; they 
wisely prefer to go to another field. 
When pigeons have been living for some time on 
an exclusive diet of root-greens their flesh has ‘a 
pronounced flavour, though, like that of venison, 
its smell is worse than its taste. Greens quickly 
ferment, and the sooner they are removed from a 
Il 
