Page:Bird Life Throughout the Year (Salter, 1913).djvu/296

210 in Epping Forest, parts of Hertfordshire and in fact as near London as Hampstead and Highgate. In all this district the hawfinch is an abundant though, on account of its shyness, not a familiar bird.

Even two such nearly-allied species as the Ring Dove and the Stock Dove are far from being identical in their tastes. W$ had the opportunity of noting that the parties of pigeons which came daily to the borders of a Midland reservoir to feed on the seeds of water-plants consisted solely of stock-doves, and those who have waited with a gun for pigeons to come in to a plantation to roost report that the stock-doves, coming from their own particular foraging expeditions, arrive separately from the ring-doves. The Turtle Dove clears off a great number of seeds of weeds, such as those of the corn-spurrey, from the fallows and stubbles, and when the Sand Grouse, those rare wanderers from the steppes of the Caspian, visited us in 1888 they showed the same taste.

The tits, a highly versatile family, are all but omnivorous. The Blue Tit will peck the "eye," the softer part at the more pointed end, out of the grains of Indian corn, while we have frequently seen the Marsh Tit at the sunflower seeds. The Great Tit has a liking for the neighbourhood of the kennels where the gamekeeper has hung up meat for his dogs, and a dark whisper attaches to it the stigma of cannabalism.