THE RING-DOVE. 
7 
cherries^ but he has often seen them pluck gooseberries and currants 
from the bushes. In other gardens around Belfast the same 
bad report is given of ring-doves being destructive to these fruits. 
In some places they confine their attention to the currants so long 
as these last^ and then pay their respects to the gooseberries^ not 
waiting in either case for the ripeness of the fruit : thirty-seven 
large gooseberries have been taken from the crop of one bird. 
They are said to alight on the bushes^ from which the fruit is 
shaken by their weighty and afterwards to pick up from the 
ground, what has fallen. At a very early hour in the morning 
they visit the gardens, and take their departure on the approach of 
the gardener — the protector of the fruit. Though keensighted 
and suspicious of danger, they do not always escape punishment. 
A relative living in the well- wooded district just alluded to, is so 
wroth against these birds that he has sacrificed many — occa- 
sionally four or five at a shot — by firing at them from his parlour 
and drawing-room windows, as they afforded him an opportunity 
when innocently feeding on beech-mast. One of these birds, which 
was weighed, proved to be Yi\ ounces. About Carnlough, on 
the coast of Antrim, where gardens are but few, ring-doves are 
accused of doing much injury to the bean-fields : — in spring, by 
picking up the beans exposed after being sown, and in autumn, by 
attacking them in the pods. Nearly a hundred small beans have 
been found in one bird. They feed much on the sea-shore in that 
district. I have often, too, particularly when out shooting at a very 
early hour of the morning, raised little parties of these birds from 
the gravelly or sandy beach of Holy wood Warren, Belfast bay; 
saline matter being probably the attraction. The fondness of the 
tame pigeon for salt is well known, and even the turtle-dove is 
down upon their breasts on the grain, and using their wings as flails, they beat out 
the pickles from the heads and then proceed to eat them. The consequence is, that 
the pickles having been thrashed out upon a matting of straw, a great proportion of 
them fall down through it to the ground, and are lost even to the wood-pigeon ; in 
short, they do not eat one particle for twenty which they thrash from the stalk. I 
have repeatedly watched this process from behind the trunk of a large willow-tree 
growing in a thick-set hedge on the edge of a wheat-field, and seen the operation go 
on within a couple of yards of me .” — Observations on “ Game and the Game 
Laws,” by J. Burn Murdoch, p. 11. (1847.) 
