Since that visit to Salisbury, described in a former chapter, when I watched and listened to the doves in those cold days in early spring, I have been there a good many times, but never at the time when the bird colony is most interesting to observe, just before and during the early part of the breeding-season. At length, in the early days of June, 1908, the wished opportunity was mine--wished yet feared, seeing that it was possible some disaster had fallen upon that unique colony of stock-doves. It is true they appeared to be long established and well able to maintain their foothold on the building in spite of malicious persecuting daws, but there was nothing to show that they had been long there, seeing that it had been observed by no person but myself that the cathedral doves were stock-doves and not the domestic pigeon found on other large buildings. Great was my happiness to find them still there, as well as the daws and all the other feathered people who make this great building their home; even the kestrels were not wanting. There were three there one morning, quarrelling with the daws in the old way in the old place, halfway up the soaring spire. The doves were somewhat diminished in number, but there were a good many pairs still, and I found no dead young ones lying about, as they were now probably grown too large to be ejected, but several young daws, about a dozen I think, fell to the ground during my stay. Undoubtedly they were dragged out of their nests and thrown down, perhaps by daws at enmity with their parents, or it may be by the doves, who are not meek-spirited, as we have seen, or they would not be where they are, and may on occasion retaliate by invading their black enemies' nesting-holes. Swallows, martins, and swifts were numerous, the martins especially, and it was beautiful to see them for ever wheeling about in a loose swarm about the building. They reminded me of bees and flies, and sometimes with a strong light on them they were like those small polished black and silvery-white beetles (Gyrinus) which we see in companies on the surface of pools and streams, perpetually gliding and whirling about in a sort of complicated dance. They looked very small at a height of a couple of hundred feet from the ground, and their smallness and numbers and lively and eccentric motions made them very insect-like. The starlings and sparrows were in a small minority among the breeders, but including these there were seven species in all, and as far as I could make out numbered about three hundred and fifty birds--probably the largest wild bird colony on any building in England.