STOCK DOVE. 165 
Their flight is exceedingly rapid. On first taking wing, 
they clap their pinions together once or twice, which, when 
many are in company, causes a considerable sound. On the 
ground they are active and lively, running quickly in rather 
an upright posture, with a stately deportment, nodding the 
head at each step. They perch on trees, but the larger 
branches only are suitable for their footing. 
Their food is composed of young green leaves, seeds of 
plants and trees—hemp, rape, and others, berries, beech-mast, 
acorns, peas, and grain of various sorts. 
The note, mostly heard in the morning, but both at ‘Night 
and Morn,’ is a repeated ‘coo-00-00.’ 
Nidification begins about the end of March, or the beginning 
of April. 
The nest, which is flat and shallow—a mere layer of a few 
sticks slightly put together, is often placed on the ground in 
an old deserted rabbit burrow, where any exist, and in this case 
on the bare sand or earth, a few sticks being occasionally 
‘used; and in such places under furze and other bushes, where 
the surface is hollowed; also, ordinarily, in any suitable holes 
in trees, from four or five feet to ten times that height from 
the ground. The same hole is sometimes resorted to again, 
but not the same year, and if disturbed by other would-be- 
tenants, they stoutly defend their own: a second brood is 
reared in the year. Incubation lasts about seventeen days, 
and in about a month the young are able to fly. The parents 
are very careful of the eggs, and will even sit on them till 
taken off with the hand. James Dalton, Hsq., of Worcester 
College, Oxford, has found the nest of the Stock Dove in a 
hollow of a decayed elm tree, something more than a foot 
in depth, at Hillesden, near Buckingham; the nest was made 
of hay or grass. Leaves are on occasion used likewise for 
the purpose. 
The eggs, white, are celle than those of the Queest, and 
somewhat pointed at the smaller end, but rounded on the 
whole, and of an oval shape. 
Male; length, one foot two inches; bill, pale reddish orange 
brown, the edges greyish yellow, the bare part round it pale 
yellowish red; the cere, red, excepting the hind part, which is 
white; iris, yellowish scarlet red; head and crown, bluish grey; 
neck on the sides, glossy iridescent green and purple red; on 
the back and nape, bluish grey; chin, bluish grey. Breast 
above, brownish purple red, shading off ‘downwards into bluish 
