314 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND 



June 1843 Thomas Coward, a keeper in the service of Lord 

 Lonsdale, 'discovered amongst the Ling on Shap Fell a 

 Wood Pigeon's nest, in which were two young ones, almost 

 ready to fly.' 1 



STOCK DOVE. 



Columba cenas, L. 



The Stock Dove appears to have been always a winter 

 visitant, if not an actual resident in Lakeland ; but there can be 

 no doubt that it is only within a comparatively recent period 

 that it has bred pretty generally in this region. Mr. Tom 

 Duckworth informed Mr. Harvie-Brown : ' In the Eose Holmes, 

 west of Carlisle, about six miles from this city, on the 28th of 

 April 1861, in an old oak-tree (one of the last vestiges of Ingle- 

 wood Forest), I found the first nest of the Stock Dove, and in 

 the following year I found another in an old rabbit-hole in the 

 bank of the river Roe, a tributary of the Caldew ; ' since which 

 date he had found these birds breeding on the Lyne, on the 

 Newbiggin Holmes, and also on the Eden. 2 Mr. W. Dickinson 

 wrote in 1882 : 'About 1840 I saw two or three of these birds 

 fly out by the arch holes of the Irton tithe barn, and was told 

 they were in the habit of breeding inside the barn in seasons 

 when the building was not much in use.' 3 Mr. Reynolds 

 assured me that when he first came to Ravenglass the Stock 

 Dove was almost unknown in the district, and none bred in 

 the rabbit-holes on Drigg Common. They first began to nest 

 at Kirksanton, and he soon afterwards heard of them as 

 frequenting the Fells, where they were known as ' Rock Doves.' 

 Latterly they have nested numerously among the sand-hills of 

 the coast, in which I have inspected the squab young. The 

 blue pigeons which frequent Whitbarrow are no doubt Stock 

 Doves, for the keeper on the ground volunteered that they were 

 'Blue Rocks,' and that he found three pairs of them nesting in 

 rabbit-holes this year [1891]. He knew the Wood Pigeon as 

 the ' Stockdove/ the name commonly applied to it in his district. 



i Carlisle Patriot, June 9, 1843. 



2 Proc. Royal Phys. Soc. vii. p. 251. 



3 West. Cumberland Rem. p. 19. 



