I did not doubt his story.

I had just found a young bird myself--a little blue-skinned, yellow-mouthed fledgling which had fallen sixty or seventy feet on to the gravel below.
But in June, he said, when the daws brought off their young, the doves entered into possession once more, and were then permitted to rear their young in peace.
I returned to Salisbury about the middle of May in better weather, when there were days that were almost genial, and found the cathedral a greater "habitacle of birds" than ever: starlings, swifts, and swallows were there, the lively little martins in hundreds, and the doves and daws in their usual numbers.

All appeared to be breeding, and for some time I saw no quarreling.

At length I spied a pair of doves with a nest in a small cavity in the stone at the back of a narrow ledge about seventy feet from the ground, and by standing back some distance I could see the hen bird sitting on the nest, while the cock stood outside on the ledge keeping guard.

I watched this pair for some hours and saw a jackdaw sweep down on them a dozen or more times at long intervals.
Sometimes after swooping down he would alight on the ledge a yard or two away, and the male dove would then turn and face him, and if he then began sidling up the dove would dash at and buffet him with his wings with the greatest violence and throw him off.