The Old Man Mentioned Above Told Me That The Birds Were Called
"Rocks" By The Townspeople, Also That They Had Been There For
As Long As He Could Remember.
Six or seven years ago, he
said, when the repairs to the roof and spire were started, the
pigeons began to go away until there was not one left.
The
work lasted three years, and immediately on its conclusion the
doves began to return, and were now as numerous as formerly.
How, I inquired, did these innocent birds get on with their
black neighbours, seeing that the daw is a cunning creature
much given to persecution - a crow, in fact, as black as any of
his family? They got on badly, he said; the doves were early
breeders, beginning in March, and were allowed to have the use
of the holes until the daws wanted them at the end of April,
when they forcibly ejected the young doves. He said that in
spring he always picked up a good many young doves, often
unfledged, thrown down by the dawn. I did not doubt his
story. I had just found a young bird myself - a little
blue-skinned, yellow-mouthed fledgling which had fallen sixty
or seventy feet on to the gravel below. But in June, he said,
when the daws brought off their young, the doves entered into
possession once more, and were then permitted to rear their
young in peace.
I returned to Salisbury about the middle of May in better
weather, when there were days that were almost genial, and
found the cathedral a greater "habitacle of birds" than ever:
starlings, swifts, and swallows were there, the lively little
martins in hundreds, and the doves and daws in their usual
numbers.
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