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<DIV>One of the bird successes in England is its colonisation by the collared
dove:</DIV>
<DIV><A title=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Collared_Dove
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Collared_Dove">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Collared_Dove</A></DIV>
<DIV>They only appeared in the 1950s (I don’t remember ever seeing one), but now
they seem to be everywhere. We even get them in our tiny garden.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In the 1950s and 1960s in our garden in Wimbledon, an outer suburb of
London, we got feral pigeons but only occasionally wood pigeons. It is the
wood pigeon that calls “Take two coos, Taffy, take two coos . . . tak . . .” –
famous from “The Years”.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>My question is: how come there are so many wood pigeons in central London
in “The Years”? Is Woolf being inauthentic or have the wood pigeon
demographics (if I can be anthropomorphic here) changed over the years?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Let’s go through the refs (using the 1969 Harvest edn p. nos):</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>226-7: these are feral – outside St Paul’s in 1914, “The pigeons were
swirling up and then settling down again. The doors were opening and shutting as
he mounted the steps. The pigeons were a nuisance, he thought, making a mess on
the steps.”</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>275: these must be wood pigeons in the country in the N. of England in
1914: “pigeons crooned in the tree tops”</DIV>
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<DIV>75: wood pigeons in Oxford in 1880</DIV>
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<DIV>3: these must be wood pigeons in central London in 1880: “The pigeons in
the squares shuffled in the tree tops, letting fall a twig or two, and crooned
over and over again the lullaby that was always interrupted.“</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>115 (1891), 174-6 & 187 (1910), 433 (Present Day): wood pigeons in
central London</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I suppose this is really a question for Ian Blyth, our Woolfian bird
expert!</DIV>
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<DIV>Stuart</DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>