BIRDS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE 303 
birds seem to keep further out at sea than their fellows, 
and are only met with nearer the shore in exceptionally 
severe weather. 
THE RING-DOVE. Columha palumbus, Linnaeus. 
Local names— Wood-Pigeon ; Cushat; Cushie : Cusha- 
DOO. 
" The cushat, startled from her ivied tree. 
Comes clapping out above him, down right o'er 
Ihe river takes, and, folding her smooth wings, 
fehoots hke an arrow up the woody face 
Of yon high steep, and o'er it bears away,— 
The loveliest feat in all the flight of birds," 
Thomas Aibd.—" Frank Sylvan.'' 
^.nTr^^^V^-^^f^V'" *^^ numbers being increased in 
autumn and wmter by immigrants. in 
The place-name, CushathiU (Middlebie) owes its origin to 
the Rmg-Dove or Wood-Pigeon, which, it would appear, 
has always been a common breeding-bird in this county • 
an opmion shared as regards Lakeland by H. A. Macpherson * 
Robert Gray states in his Birds of the West of Scotland in 
1871 : " Though at the present day it exists in very great 
numbers m cultivated districts, its first appearance is an 
event actuaUy within the recoUection of old people now 
Hving m the county in which the species is most abundant 
In East Lothian it is not more than 80 years since it was 
qmte unknown."! At the beginning of the nineteenth 
century, this species was certainly not so superabundant 
as It IS now. We read of it as - cooing in the enchanted 
groves at Langholm " in 1794,$ and Sir WiUiam Jardine 
Avriting of it in 1842, describes it as abundant in the south 
ot Scotland, and adds : It is even blamed, and with some 
reason, for its depredation of the crops of the farmers, 
* Fauna of Lakeland, 1892, p. 313. 
t Birds of West Scotland, 1871, p. 213. 
X Stat. Acct. Scot., Vol. XIII., p. 597. 
