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. 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. In the stock-dove this is a better, more musical, and a more varied sound than in any other Columba known to me. The pleasing quality of the sound as well as the variety in it could be well noted here where the birds were many, scattered about on ledges and projections high above the earth, and when bird after bird uttered its plaint, each repeating his note half a dozen to a dozen times, one in slow measured time, and deep-voiced like the rock-dove, but more musical; another rapidly, with shorter, impetuous notes in a higher key, as if carried away by excitement. There were not two birds that cooed in precisely the same way, and the same bird would often vary its manner of cooing.

It was best to hear them during the afternoon service in the cathedral, when the singing of the choir and throbbing and pealing of the organ which filled the vast interior was heard outside, subdued by the walls through which it passed, and was like a beautiful mist or atmosphere of sound pervading and enveloping the great building; and when the plaining of the doves, owing to the rhythmic flow of the notes and their human characters, seemed to harmonize with and be a part of that sacred music.

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