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.  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.  When he swooped closer the dove would spring up and meet him in the air, striking him at the moment of meeting, and again the daw would be beaten.  When I left three days after witnessing this contest, the doves were still in possession of their nest, and I concluded that they were not so entirely at the mercy of the jackdaw as the old man had led me to believe.