THE STOCKDOVE. 
313 
to SO many trees and shrubs for breeding purposes as the ringdove. 
From the lofty pine to the lowly thorn, none comes amiss to it. In 
the locality of some of the nests, too, is to be detected a peculiarity. 
While one is placed near the topmost branches of the tall sycamore, 
another is found scarcely four feet from the soil, sheltered in the leafy 
hedgerow. In mild winters the ringdove visits our neighbourhood 
as early as February. She does not leave till October. During the 
winter she retires to wooded coverts, grows very shy and timorous, and 
flies high and far if any person approach her. 
The stockdove breeds in a cavity in the trunk of a tree, and the 
first brood may be discovered about the early part of April. Unless 
some mishap occur, she has three broods in a year ; but she never 
brings up two sets of fledgelings in the same nest. And why ? 
Because she never clears the nest of the ordure of the young, and, 
consequently, in time it fills up the hollow. As each couple has, in 
the course of a summer, several broods, and needs several cavities, they 
run the risk of not finding a sufficient supply. Often they are obliged 
to fight for the possession of an asylum, — contending not only with 
birds of their own kind, but with woodpeckers and starlings, and some- 
times coming off" " second best." In the following year they return to 
their old nest ; the ordure no longer exists — either because the process of 
decomposition has got rid of it, or it has been cleared away by insects, 
or by some bird which has appropriated the little dwelling-place. 
The passenger-pigeon, which, by the way, has no Egyptian con- 
gener, belongs to a diflferent family, though often confounded with the 
carrier-pigeon. The latter (Golumha tabellaria) is a slight, elegant 
bird, weU known for the rapidity of his flight, and the certainty with 
which he returns from a considerable distance to his original point of 
departure. He was formerly utilized for the conveyance of important 
news or special messages, and though superseded to a great extent b}^ 
the electric telegraph, is still occasionally employed. During the siege 
of Paris by the Germans, in the late war, communication between the 
besieged and the world without was maintained almost entirely by 
means of carrier-pigeons. It is estimated that their usual rate of flight 
exceeds fifty miles an hour. Recently one of these birds was despatched 
