“Human presence, only feet away from the sitting birds, offers no problem” While I have shot, or shot at, woodpigeons many times and admired them as thoroughly sporting birds, I have never had the opportunity to study them at close quarters. Never, that is, until a year or so ago when a pair of ring doves — another name for woodpigeon — attracted to the scattered seed beneath a bird table, decided that the garden offered security, food on the side and sheltered comfort.
The pair, plump and portly, were perhaps all too well aware of the local danger presented by a pair of resident sparrowhawks. Over the past year, I have come across scattered remains, usually wind-blown feathers and well-picked backbones, of half-a-dozen pigeons. The spar, a hen I…
