LETTER XLIII

Dear Sir,-A pair of honey-buzzards, buteo apivorus, sive vespivorus Raii, built them a large shallow nest, composed of twigs and lined with dead beechen leaves, upon a tall slender beech near the middle of Selborne-hanger, in the summer of 1780. In the middle of the month of June a bold boy climbed this tree, though standing on so steep and dizzy a situation, and brought down an egg, the only one in the nest, which had been sat on for some time, and contained the embrio of a young bird. The egg was smaller, and not so round as those of the common buzzard; was dotted at each end with small red spots, and surrounded in the middle with a broad bloody zone.

The hen-bird was shot, and answered exactly to Mr. Ray's description of that species; had a black cere, short thick legs, and a long tail. When on the wing this species may be easily distinguished from the common buzzard by its hawk-like appearance, small head, wings not so blunt, and longer tail. This specimen contained in its craw some limbs of frogs, and many grey snails without shells. The irides of the eyes of this bird were of a beautiful bright yellow colour.

About the tenth of July in the same summer a pair of sparrow-hawks bred in an old crow's nest* on a low beech in the same hanger; and as their brood, which was numerous, began to grow up, became so daring and ravenous, that they were a terror to all the dames in the village that had chickens or ducklings under their care. A boy climbed the tree, and found the young so fledged that they all escaped from him; but discovered that a good house had been kept the larder was well stored with provisions; for he brought down a young blackbird, jay, and house-martin, all clean picked, and some half devoured. The old birds had been observed to make sad havoc for some days among the new-flown swallows and martins, which, being but lately out of their nests, had not acquired those powers and command of wing that enable them, when more mature, to set such enemies at defiance.

* It has been asserted that the sparrow-hawk does not build its own nest. This is a mistake. Nearly all those we have found have been constructed by the birds themselves, and we have succeeded in photographing a member of the species in the act of building.-R. K.

LETTER XLIV

SELBORNE, Nov. 30, 1780.

DEAR SIR,-Every incident that occasions a renewal of our correspondence will ever be pleasing and agreeable to me.

As to the wild wood-pigeon, the anas, or vinago, of Ray, I am much of your mind; and see no reason for making it the origin of the common house-dove but suppose those that have advanced that opinion may have been misled by another appellation, often given to the cenas, which is that of stock-dove.

Unless the stock-dove in the winter varies greatly in manners from itself in summer, no species seems more unlikely to be domesticated, and to make an house-dove. We very rarely see the latter settle on trees at all, nor does it ever haunt the woods; but the former, as long as it stays with us, from November perhaps to February, lives the same wild life with the ring-dove, palumbus torquatus; frequents coppices and groves, supports itself chiefly by mast, and delights to roost in the tallest beeches. Could it be known in what manner stock-doves build, the doubt would be settled with me at once, provided they construct their nests on trees, like the ring-dove, as I much suspect they do.*

You received, you say, last spring a stock-dove from Sussex; and are informed that they sometimes breed in that county.† But why did not your correspondent determine the place of its nidification, whether on rocks, cliffs, or trees? It he was not an adroit ornithologist I should doubt the fact,

* The stock-dove nests in hollow trees, crevices of rock in quarries and cliffs, in deserted rabbit burrows, old crow or magpie nests, and even under furze bushes on the ground. They sometimes take possession of holes in the masonry of old ruins and under the slates of stone barns.-R. K.

† Our friend Dr. Bowdler Sharpe says that the bird breeds plentifully at Selborne, and we have seen it there during the nesting season.-R. K.

because people with us perpetually confound the stock-dove with the ring-dove.*

For my own part, I readily concur with you in supposing that house-doves are derived from the small blue rock-pigeon, for many reasons.† In the first place the wild stock-dove is manifestly larger than the common house-dove, against the usual rule of domestication, which generally enlarges the breed. Again, those two remarkable black spots on the remiges of each wing of the stock-dove, which are so characteristic of the species, would not, one should think, be totally lost by its being reclaimed; but would often break out among its descendants. But what is worth an hundred arguments is, the instance you give in Sir Roger Mostyn's house-doves, in Caernarvonshire, which, though tempted by plenty of food and gentle treatment, can never be prevailed on to inhabit their cote for any time; but, as soon as they begin to breed, betake themselves to the fastnesses of Ormshead, and deposit their young in safety amidst the inaccessible caverns and precipices of that stupendous promontory.

"Naturam expellas furcâ. . . tamen usque recurret."

I have consulted a sportsman, now in his seventy-eighth year, who tells me that fifty or sixty years back, when the beechen woods were much more extensive than at present, the number of wood-pigeons was astonishing; that he has often killed near twenty in a day; and that with a long wild-fowl piece he has shot seven or eight at a time on the wing as they came wheeling over his head he moreover adds, which I was not aware of, that often there were among them little parties of small blue doves, which he calls rockiers. The food of these numberless emigrants was beech-mast and some acorns; and particularly barley, which they collected in the stubbles. But of late years, since the vast increase of turnips, that vegetable has furnished a great part of their support in hard weather; and the holes they pick in these roots greatly damage the crop. From this food their flesh has contracted a rancidness which occasions them to be rejected by nicer judges of eating, who thought

* The ring-dove, the stock-dove, and the rock-dove are frequently confused. The first bird may be distinguished by its greater size and the conspicuous white patches on either side of its neck, and the two latter from each other by the fact that the rock-dove has a white rump and the stock-dove a blue one.-R. K. †There is now no doubt upon this point.-R. K.

Undoubtedly stock-doves.-R. K.