THE COMMONER RIRDS OF OUR GARDENS. 



435 



WooD-riGEON : Columba palumlms. 



The wood-pigeon is generally distributed throughout the wooded 

 districts of the British Isles, where it is also known as the ring-dove, 

 or queest. 



This bird has greatly increased during the last thirty years or so, 

 owing to the close preservation of woods for game and perhaps to the 

 increased cultivation of turnips and other winter forage crops. 



Yarrell says large flocks in winter and autumn cross the North Sea 

 from the Continent by an east-to-west flight. It builds chiefly in woods 

 in fir, elm, beech, or holly trees, but preys on the crops of neighbouring 

 farms and gardens, being chiefly a vegetable feeder. 



The first clutch is laid early in April, the second early in June, and 

 a third is not infrequent. The eggs are invariably two in number, as with 

 all pigeons. Incubation lasts sixteen to eighteen days ; the male shares 

 in the task. The young when hatched are helpless and blind until the 

 ninth day. They are nourished by food supplied from the crops of the 

 parent birds ; they are fully fledged by the end of the third week. It is 

 strictly monogamous though gregarious in winter. 



Its food in the summer consists of green corn, young clover, the 

 leaves of which they devour by the bushel, and where numerous they are 

 most destructive to ripe peas and tares. It also eats gooseberries, and 

 in winter it eats acorns and beech nuts, and does serious damage to 

 cabbage and similar plants. 



Lapwing, Plover, or Peewit : Vancllus cristatus. 



The plover is a useful bird against which no one has a word to say. 

 It is more often seen in open fields than in gardens. Yarrell says it is 

 a partial migrant southwards in severe weather. 



It is decreasing in England, partly owing to the taking of its eggs, 

 but immense flocks come over from the Continent m the autumn, and 

 the spread of cultivation in Scotland seems rather to have favoured its 

 increase. 



This bird has a characteristic flight, due to the slow flapping of its 

 rounded wings, and by its cry tries to allure one away from its nest. 



From autumn to winter it is an excellent bird for the table, and its 

 eggs are a luxury in spring.* The taking of the eggs involves great loss 

 of birds, as many that are collected are unfit to eat, being partially 

 incubated. 



A farmer in Worcestershire wrote me that the bird there was a general 

 favourite, and never shot in those parts ; and another gentleman informed 

 me that he had reason to believe that the green plover feeds upon the 

 small black slug which infests strawberry plants. The extensive straw- 

 berry fields in that part of Herefordshire are frequented during autumn 

 and winter by enormous flocks of peewits, which are encouraged and are 

 never disturbed by the owners. 



* Mr. F. V. Theobald, writing in the October number of Science Progress on 

 " Economic Ornithology," pp. 261-283, suggests that it should be made illegal, not 

 only to take the eggs of the plover, but to offer them for sale in shops (p. 272). 



