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could wedge in place at night.
    While I had been working I had from time to time thrown grain down, hoping that Charlie One would come and investigate and perhaps absorb the fact that here was a safe roosting place. He had eaten the grain but, as I discovered the next day, he seemed not to have noticed, or not to have accepted, ‘Cosy Cote’ as a home. The cavity was empty of droppings. Two days later, though he had been present in the morning, Charlie One did not appear for his evening feed, but since he had been absent once or twice before at feeding times and yet had always turned up later I did not worry. However, when he did not appear that evening nor again the following morning I began to feel a mounting dismay; when the next day he was still absent I knew beyond doubt that he had gone. I wondered sadly if he had at last flown off to seek his former home or if he had fallen prey to a buzzard or a hawk or even one of the village cats.
    â€˜I’ve lost my pigeon,’ were my first words to Erchy when I next saw him. I was not aware at the time that there is a Gaelic word which is pronounced very much like ‘pigeon’ but which translated means ‘big fat belly’, so perhaps it is not surprising that Erchy, whose first language was Gaelic, should have looked momentarily nonplussed by my announcement. His eyes glinted over me as the right word slotted into his mind.
    â€˜Ach, you mean your dove!’ he exclaimed. ‘Aye, well, did I not warn you it would stay only until it was ready to go?’
    I nodded affirmation. ‘All the same, I should like to know what’s happened to him,’ I said. ‘Whether he’s making back for his own home or whether he’s making a meal for a cat or a buzzard.’
    â€˜Likely he’ll be with the other doves at the cave over there.’ Erchy gestured towards the high cliffs that edged the shore. ‘That’s always where any stray doves end up that I’ve seen.’
    â€˜They go to live with the rock doves?’ I was surprised.
    â€˜Indeed they do so. An’ breed with them, too. There’s been that much cross-breedin’ with these racin’ doves I don’t believe there’s many of the birds there that are the real wild ones any more.’
    As soon as I could I took my binoculars and made my way to the cliffs where, lying in a well-screened cleft of rock near the cave, I was able to watch the comings and goings of the colony of rock doves. It was not long before I spotted Charlie One. His neck feathers glistened with more colours than the neck feathers of the wild birds and of course he was easily identifiable by the rings on his legs, but there was nothing in his behaviour to distinguish him from the rest of the flock with which he appeared to have achieved a happy co-existence. I watched for over an hour, my feelings a strange mixture of discovery and loss. I went home and blocked up the cavity in the peat stack.
    Charlie Two stayed with me for only about ten days before he departed but whether he flew home or whether he also joined the rock doves I never knew. Charlie Three had been with me barely a week before a surprisingly apologetic child brought me a tangle of feathers – all that was left of Charlie Three after their cat had finished with him. Charlie Big Eyes had been with me nearly a month, but by now I had grown philosophical about the ways of pigeons. He was welcome to shelter and food if he wished to avail himself of them, but since I accepted that even supposing his homing instinct did not reassert itself strongly enough to lure him away he would in time respond to the call of the wild. Meanwhile I had no intention of again dismantling my peat stack to provide him with a ‘Cosy Cote’.

3. ‘Lovely Bully’
    I continued my search for Bonny while my thoughts ranged over the variety of animals and birds and even insects which I had enjoyed nursing back to health.