c kind and the ringdove in the parks, the Salisbury doves though
in the town are not of it. They come not down to mix with the currents
of human life in the streets and open spaces; they fly away to the
country to feed, and dwell on the cathedral above the houses and people
just as sea-birds--kittiwake and guillemot and gannet--dwell on the
ledges of some vast ocean-fronting cliff.

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. 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 sw