They come not down to mix with the currents of human life in the streets and open spaces; they fly away to the country to feed, and dwell on the cathedral above the houses and people just as sea-birds--kittiwake and guillemot and gannet--dwell on the ledges of some vast ocean-fronting cliff.
The old man mentioned above told me that the birds were called "rocks" by the townspeople, also that they had been there for as long as he could remember.

Six or seven years ago, he said, when the repairs to the roof and spire were started, the pigeons began to go away until there was not one left.

The work lasted three years, and immediately on its conclusion the doves began to return, and were now as numerous as formerly.

How, I inquired, did these innocent birds get on with their black neighbours, seeing that the daw is a cunning creature much given to persecution--a crow, in fact, as black as any of his family?
They got on badly, he said; the doves were early breeders, beginning in March, and were allowed to have the use of the holes until the daws wanted them at the end of April, when they forcibly ejected the young doves.

He said that in spring he always picked up a good many young doves, often unfledged, thrown down by the dawn.