COUNTRY LIFE
THE cohorts of immigrant woodpigeons, gleaming in white and fawn, have at last come down upon our fields and gardens in devastating force. They have specialised on Brussels Sprouts. These most useful of greens have been tall enough to emerge from the protective snows and have thus advertised their succulence. The contents of the crop of one of these harpies give evidence that two of them wi: consume within a day a large vegetable dishful. We have of la:: years—please the pigs!—whitewashed a good many birds, even the little owl, but no one has stood up for the winter pigeons. The numbers are immense. Farmers who have set up hides near baited patches of ground have shot as many as a round hundred a day to a single gun ; and if you should be present in a fir plantation towards evening the noise of the birds flocking in to roost makes a continuous clamour. The birds are much more successful in fattening themsehei than are our benefactors, the green plover, now most strictly pro- tected. The birds are in severe straits, almost starved. Touching their culinary quality I have just come upon a seventeenth-century letter describing the despatch of a great pie of plover, but with some woodcock added, from a Lancashire landowner to a London friend. Pigeon destroyers might consider similar gifts!
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