Besides man, the wood-pigeon has its own bird-enemies. “In districts where the hooded crow abounds,” says the author whom I have just quoted, “he is always on the look-out for its eggs, which, shining out white from the shallow, unsubstantial nest, are easily seen by him. The sparrow-hawk seizes the young when they are half-grown and plump; he having been carefully noticed watching the nest day by day as if waiting for the time when they should be fit for his eating. The larger hawks, however, prey upon the poor wood-pigeon himself.” With all his pleasant cooings in the wood, therefore, and all his complacent strutting about with elevated head and protruded breast—with all his gambols and graces, his striking the points of his wings together as he rises into the air, to express a pleasure to his mate beyond his cooing, he has not such a care free life of it. He is always kept on the alert, therefore, and, being always on the watch against danger, is not at all a sound sleeper. The least disturbance at night rouses him. “I have frequently,” continues our author, “attempted to approach the trees when the wood-pigeons were roosting, but even on the darkest nights they would take alarm. The poor wood-pigeon has no other defence against its enemies than its ever watchful and never sleeping timidity; not being able to do battle against even the smallest of its many persecutors.” Gilbert White says that the wood-pigeons were greatly decreasing, in his time, in Hampshire, and there were then only about a hundred in the woods at Selborne, but in former times the flocks had been so vast, not only there, but in the surrounding districts, that they had traversed the air morning and evening like rooks, reaching for a mile together, and that, when they thus came to rendezvous there by thousands, the sound of their wings, suddenly roused from their roosting-trees in an evening, rising all at once into the air, was like a sudden rolling of distant thunder. Although the wood-pigeon is considered to be the original parent of the tame pigeon, yet it does not seem possible to tame the young of this bird, though taken from the nest quite young. It is a bird which appears to hate confinement, and, as soon as it has the opportunity, spite of all kindness and attention, it flies away to the freedom of the woods. [Illustration] CHAPTER XVII. THE WHITE-THROAT. With none of our migratory birds, our spring visitants from southern lands, is the lover of the country more familiar than with the White-throat, which, with its nest, is here so beautifully and livingly depicted by Mr. Harrison Weir.