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THE BIRDS OF HAMPSHIRE. 
. . . . He moreover adds, which I was not aware of, that 
often there were among them Httle parties of small blue 
doves, which he calls rockiers." 
In this case we have no doubt that the large flocks 
consisted of ring-doves and the little parties of stock- 
doves, which are still called blue rocks by many Hampshire 
people. 
For many years after White's time the stock-dove was 
considered to be only a winter visitor to Hampshire. 
Thus, in Garrow's "History of Lymington (1825), we 
read . . . . " they leave us as soon as the hard frosts are 
over." 
Neither Gilpin nor Hawker throw any light on the 
question, though a single specimen is credited to Hawker's 
bag in 1803. 
But when Wise takes up his pen (1862), he calls the 
stock-dove " numerous " in the New Forest, " building in 
the holes of the old beech-trees." 
And not long afterwards Bell found the bird nesting in 
the very grounds of White's old house. "A pair of them 
(he says) have built in the old pollard ash, in the hole 
formerly occupied for years by the barn owls .... This 
was in April and May, 1867. They bred again the 
following year in the same place. I have repeatedly 
heard their peculiar coo .... in the breeding season 
for several successive years." 
From that time forward the bird has become spread 
over the whole county, including the island. Mr. Howard 
Saunders remarks, in the Fourth Edition of Yarrell, that it 
" nests in abundance in the holes of the wooded crags near 
Ventnor," and Dr. Bovvdler Sharpe has obtained many 
specimens for the British Museum at Avington. 
In the Central Hill district it frequently nests in 
