The eggs are two in number, of a pure white colour, and of a roundish form. Three broods are sometimes produced in a season, the first of which is generally abroad by the beginning of May, and the second about the end of July. The period of incubation is sixteen or seventeen days.
All must be familiar with the soft _coo coo_ of this shy bird; heard in the summer woodlands, it falls on the ear with a particularly soothing effect. In the winter it congregates in large flocks, the number of the permanent residents being then much increased by fresh arrivals from the continent; and very beautiful they look, flying about amid the snow, in their greyish blue plumage, ornamented with black and white, green and purple, and suffused on the breast with a reddish flush, as though the light of the setting sun were shining on them.
_Columba Ênas_ is the scientific name of this species. The first term, as you are aware, means simply a Dove, the etymology of the second is not so clear, most likely it comes from _oinos_--relating to wine, and alludes to the ruddy or vinous tinge of the breast. This is a somewhat stouter bird in the body than the last, and it wants the white patches which so vary and enliven the plumage of the Ring Dove, than which it is less elegant, although perhaps its plumage is more rich and splendid, with that shifting play of golden green and violet which all the Doves, and some other of the feathered tribes present. But for this, the plumage of our Stock Dove, (so called, it is said, because it is the original stock from which our common domestic Pigeons are derived,) would be considered plain and dull; it is chiefly greyish blue, deepening at parts into purple, and flushed here and there with deep red; the legs of this, as of most Doves and Pigeons, are light red, and the bill light brown or yellowish.
"The Stock Dove builds in the old oak wood,"
says Mary Howitt, in her beautiful song of the Pheasant, and so no doubt it often does; but more frequently, perhaps, in the fir plantation, or among the beeches, or any other trees that present a suitable nesting-place; a hole in the trunk is frequently chosen, it may be only four or five, or as many as forty or fifty feet from the ground. Sometimes the flat and shallow nest, just a few sticks loosely put together, is placed on the ground itself, in a deserted rabbit-burrow, or some other hollow place; beneath furze bushes it is occasionally found, and even in hedges and fruit trees near to woods and coppices.