All Appeared To Be Breeding, And For Some Time I Saw
No Quarreling.
At length I spied a pair of doves with a nest
in a small cavity in the stone at
The back of a narrow ledge
about seventy feet from the ground, and by standing back some
distance I could see the hen bird sitting on the nest, while
the cock stood outside on the ledge keeping guard. I watched
this pair for some hours and saw a jackdaw sweep down on them
a dozen or more times at long intervals. Sometimes after
swooping down he would alight on the ledge a yard or two away,
and the male dove would then turn and face him, and if he then
began sidling up the dove would dash at and buffet him with
his wings with the greatest violence and throw him off. When
he swooped closer the dove would spring up and meet him in the
air, striking him at the moment of meeting, and again the daw
would be beaten. When I left three days after witnessing this
contest, the doves were still in possession of their nest, and
I concluded that they were not so entirely at the mercy of the
jackdaw as the old man had led me to believe.
It was, on this occasion, a great pleasure to listen to the
doves. The stock-dove has no set song, like the ringdove, but
like all the other species in the typical genus Columba it has
the cooing or family note, one of the most human-like sounds
which birds emit.
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