The commonest birds are pigeons (the large notou and other varieties), doves, parrots, kingfishers and ducks.
There are 35 species of pigeons and doves, many of them most beautifully coloured and all edible.
Yet working girls his age were usually either wives or soiled doves.
We seem here to have a remnant of the very ancient and widely diffused tree-worship. Sometimes, however, auguries were taken in other manners, being drawn from the moaning of doves in the branches, the murmur of a fountain which rose close by, or the resounding of the wind in the brazen caldrons which formed a circle all round the temple.
In life, however, its appearance must be wholly unlike, for it rarely flies, hops actively on the ground or among bushes, with its tail erect or turned towards its head, and continually utters various and strange notes, - some, says Darwin, are "like the cooing of doves, others like the bubbling of water, and many defy all similes."
