The Pigeon's Appetite
It is prophesied, I see, that some of our birds, especially woodpigeons, are likely to have a hungry winter owing to the dearth of beech mast and of acorns. The pigeons are of course great eaters of acorns and of nuts ; and nothing is too tough for their powerful digestions ; but of all birds the pigeon has perhaps the most catholic taste, at least in respect to the vegetable kingdom. Nothing conies amiss ; and it is this omnivorous taste that keeps the numbers high. They will eat up a field of turnip tops only less completely than hurdled sheep. In early summer they will gorge themselves, not on beech-mast but on beech-leaves. They will swallow and digest huge quantities of nuts or acorns, shell and all ; and what serves them best is their taste and capacity for the last of all the berries to be formed and ripened, the ivy terry. Even if all berries fail them they will strip the clover fields as they stripped the turnips. Some very large flocks of winter immigrants from Scandinavia are already reported from the Eastern Counties ; and sonic of the local wiseacres predict from. these movements the coming of hard weather. Birds are clever, but are they ever prophets of events not yet in sight of our meteorologists ?
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