1902] Bethune Passengcr Pigeons. 43 



These were called rookeries, but he believed they were not only 

 roosting places but breeding grounds also. At the time ot his 

 youth, near Brougham, east of Toronto, pigeons were plentiful at 

 all times after the wheat was cut, and when hunters went out 

 looking for pigeons they felt certain of finding them in almost 

 every field of wheat stubble. Some years before there had been a 

 rookery a few miles north of Brougham, where there were plenty 

 of young to be seen, and no doubt the birds nested. The migra- 

 tions took place in the same immense flocks as Dr. Bethune had 

 described ; some ot them would darken the sky, but he could not 

 recall the shape of them. 



Mr. T. C. Scott, said that in the summers of '69 and '70 in 

 Halton County, there occured the last flights that he could recol- 

 lect. He remembered counting as many as twenty flocks passing 

 while he was on his way from the house to the school; all of these 

 flocks were widely extended east and west, but not many yards in 

 depth. On the mountains near Milton, there was a large pine 

 forest, and old hunters said that during ihe regular spring flights, 

 the pigeons rested on the mountains after having crossed the 

 lake, alighting on the trees so thickly that the limbs would break 

 with their weight. This occured every year as though it were a 

 settled habit with the pigeons to rest in this place. He, too, had 

 noticed the great width and short depth of the flocks. 



Mr. J. E. Keays had heard his father describe how the farmers 

 used to salt several barrels of pigeons breasts for winter use. 



Mr. Saunders read from his note book the records he had 

 kept of the flight of the pigeons, showing that the last regular 

 flocks he had seen near London were in 1876. After that, five or 

 ten birds at a time were seen, for two or three years, and then no 

 further regular migration was noted in the spring at all, but 

 occassional birds in ones, twos or threes, have been seen near 

 London up to as late as '95. At Point Pelee small flocks of 5 

 to 20 were seen in August 1882, which may have bred there. 



The latest record of birds that probably bred in the London 

 District is that of 3 or 4 birds, a male, female and young, which 

 were seen and the female and one young shot, about 15 miles east 

 of London, on September 24th, 1885. 



