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No doubt there are experts to whom a wood-pigeon's nest is something apart and distinct from the nest of the magpie, but to your unsophisticated amateur a nest that is large may be anything rook's, magpie's, pigeon's, or great auk's. To such an one the only true test lies in the eggs. Solvitur ambulando.
Its chief feathered enemies, the egg and fledgling robbers, are the same as the wood-pigeon's; moreover, the turtledove is least persecuted by man of our four pigeons, and being strictly migratory it quits the country before shooting-time begins; add to this that the turtle-dove has been specially protected under Sir Herbert Maxwell's Act of 1894 in a good number of English counties, from Surrey to Yorkshire.
As we wend our way among the thick vegetation and shadowy trees, the wood-pigeon's soothing, droning notes fall upon the ear like the melody of a human mother lulling her infant babe to sleep. Now and again the jungle-cock shouts his defiant reveille in a startling fashion, breaking the almost solemn silence.
This cannot be an isolated instance; and there is reason to believe that the reptilian class daubs its garments with similar products. From the reptile to the bird is no great distance. Then the Wood-pigeon's iridescent hues, the eyes on the Peacock's tail, the Kingfisher's sea-blue, the Flamingo's carmine are more or less closely connected with the urinary excretions? Why not?
You could see the water glittering in the sunshine before you were half-way, but the Skipper had to stop twice. "There's a nest up that tree," he said. "Wood-pigeon's. I could climb up there." "See how dirty it would make your clothes," cried Dot. "Well, they could be washed," said her brother, in his lordly way.
She talks a great deal and I like nothing better than to listen; for although what she says is naught, yet her manner of saying it does not lack charm. Her voice is wonderfully sweet it comes from her throat like a wood-pigeon's, and education has not ruined her diction." "She's as shy as any wood-pigeon, too we all know that; and you've done a clever thing to tame her."
The growing interest of the drive as they neared the north-west and the familiar landmarks of his childhood came into sight, flooded with the June sunshine the ruined mine-shafts staring up so starkly, the glory of white cattle in the golden light, the first glimpse of the pale roofs of Cloom itself, prismatic as a wood-pigeon's plumage, all these things struck at his heart with a keener shock than did anything personal, and made thought of his mother sink away from him.
The ash at the present moment is owned by the wood-pigeon; were the wood-pigeon's heir to marry the missel-thrush's heiress, just imagine the conflicting claims which would arise. "The family would be divided amongst itself; all the relations upon the paternal side, and the relations upon the maternal side would join the contest, and peace would be utterly at an end. And so in all other instances.
My companions followed my example, and we examined the places that had been scoured bare, to see that they were very much like the cliffs down by the shore, being evidently of the slate common there, a coarse grey slate, stained with markings of lavender and scarlet pink, which, where it was freshly fractured, glistened in the sun like some portions of a wood-pigeon's breast.
Silence gathers itself together out of the dark, deepened, not broken, by the hushing of the wind among the beech-leaves, or the startled cluck of a blackbird, or a wood-pigeon's soft murmur, as it dreams in the silver fir. Under the brown wings of the dark, the night throbs with mystic presences; the hills glimmer with an inward life; whispering voices hurry through the air.
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