MORRIS : FOOD OF BIRDS, 



133 



might otherwise have been, and while they have young. The imperative 

 dictates of nature makes them, as I have said, resort to other food for the 

 supply of the insatiable cravings of their hungry broods. 



Now, a few words on the food of the woodpigeon, another much 

 maligned species, and I would first of all allow that when a gentleman who 

 gives his name and address, writes in the Times and states a matter of fact, 

 which has come under his own observation, one is bound to give full cre- 

 dence to what he says. I therefore have no doubt, but that the statement 

 by Mr. A. Kawson of Bromley in the Times as to his having on one occasion, 

 namely on the 17th of April 1841, found eighty-seven beans in the crop of 

 a woodpigeon, may be accepted as correct ; but the further inference from it, 

 that inasmuch, as this was in the evening, if the same number be allowed for 

 its morning meal the number it would take in a day would be 1 74, or a pair of 

 birds, 348, and this if they carried on their depredations for a fortnight they 

 would consume in that time 4,882. So that, as the farmers must expect a pro- 

 portionate consumption of beans according to the number of birds in a 

 flock, that therefore the race of woodpigeons must be exterminated, I do 

 most utterly regret. Why, Sir, at this rate, knowing, as many of your 

 readers do, as well as yourself, the vast numbers of these birds that there are 

 in many parts of the country, there would not be a bean left in the land, by 

 this time, and if the birds lived on nothing else for a season, as is suggested, 

 they themselves would have died of starvation, so that the evil would have 

 cured itself long ago. 



But, what is the fact of the case 1 I need not tell your country readers 

 that beans are for the most part sown in the aatumn ; some in the spring. 

 'Now they are not ripe till after the ordinary wheat harvest, say in Sep- 

 tember, October, or JSTovember, or even later according to the season. 

 Those too, which are sown in the spring, are sown, or ought to be sown, 

 by February, or March; I must therefore ask the correspondent of the 

 Times if he has any knowledge or notion where, and when, and how, the 

 individual bird in question obtained the beans which he found within it. 

 Your readers will know of themselves, without my telling them, that pigeons 

 belong to the family of the Columbidae, and not to the Rasores or Scratchers. 

 No one ever saw a pigeon scratching like a cock. It is clear therefore that 

 the beans in question must have been obtained in some exceptional manner, 

 or if we suppose the bean crop to have been sown, and that too in the 

 south of England, even so late as the 17 th of April, or about that date — 



