Wild Birds, Usefid and Injurious. 
29 
Its food is similar to that of the ringdove, but perhaps includes 
a larger proportion of charlock and other weed seeds. 
The true Rockdove is about the same size as the stockdove, 
but may be distinguished from it by the presence of a white 
patch on the back and two distinct black bars on the wing. It 
nests in caves and is almost entii’ely confined to the neighbour- 
hood of the coast. Corn, when obtainable, is its favourite food, 
but weed seeds and the roots of couch are also taken. 
The small and pretty Turtledove is a summer visitor to this 
country. Its food appears to consist chiefly of grain and seeds, 
and Dr. Sharpe states that both this species and the stockdove 
do great damage to mustard fields when the seed is ripe. 
In moderate numbers Pheasants do no appreciable damage, 
bxit when very abundant the harm they do is serious. They 
trample down corn and feed upon it at seed time as well as in 
the stook, and attack potatoes and root crops. Quantities ol 
injurious grubs are, however, destroyed by them, and many 
hundreds of both wire-worms and leatherjackets have been 
found in the crops of single birds. Though they thus eat the 
produce, desirable and undesirable, of arable land, the bulk of 
their food is obtained in the woods. It is of a most varied 
description, and includes acorns, beechmast, maize, hazel-nuts, 
the stones of wild cherries, holly berries, yew berries, rose hips, 
and hawthorn berries ; the leaves of the buttercup, daisy, prim- 
rose, woodsorrell, stellaria, bedstraw, clover, fern, and grass ; 
the shoots of sedge ; the roots of buttercup and anemone ; 
the seeds of chickweed, bindweed, scabious, bluebell, sedge, 
buttercup, plantain, hempnettle, grass and fir cones ; and 
quantities of the spangle-galls from oak leaves, slugs, snails, 
worm coccoons, ants’ eggs, daddy longlegs, the wingless female 
of the mottled umber moth, beetles, caddis-flies, and the large 
grubs of a two-winged fly named bibio. All the above are 
within my own experience, and the list might be considerably 
increased, for instance by the addition of buckwheat, bilberries, 
blackberries, and the seeds of rush. A pheasant’s crop often 
contains a very varied mixture ; thus one yielded 278 bibio 
grubs, 100 fir cone seeds, about 12 tiny snails, yew berries, 
a quantity of fern leaves, buttercup leaves, blades of grass, and 
other unrecognisable material, including, I believe, a sloe. 
Some young birds, killed by a grassmower, contained cater- 
pillars, beetles, aphides, and several seeds, including those of 
the plantain and buttercup. The powerful flight and wiliness 
of the cock pheasant, at any rate late in the season, make it a 
fine sporting bird, though there is usually an air of artificiality 
about it which detracts from its merits ; and to the ornithologist 
at least it is a poor substitute for the many delightful birds 
destroyed in its real or supposed interest. 
