318 



found in pasture-land?, 17 per cent, were on plowed ground, and 12 

 per cent, on stubble. The remainder were in fields of wheat and corn, 

 3 per cent, in each. 



Mourning-doves. — Mourning-doves were mainly in pastures (40 

 per cent.), corn fields (29 per cent.), and stubble lands (23 per cent.), 

 these three situations thus containing 92 per cent, of all these birds 

 recorded. As tested by the average numbers per square mile, their 

 preferences seem much less definite. While commonest on pasture- 

 lands (50 to the square mile), they were almost as abundant in stub- 

 ble, meadows, and orchards, — about 40 per mile in each situation, — 

 and more than half as common in corn fields (26 to the mile). Their 

 occurrence on plowed ground and wheat was only occasional, and 

 their numbers there were trivial. 



Goldfinches and Field-sparrows. — These little birds were at this 

 time similarly distributed, occurring in the same situations and in 

 nearly equal ratios in each. Both were most numerous in pastures, 

 42 per cent, for the goldfinches and 40 per cent, for the field-sparrows, 

 and were otherwise rather equally scattered through corn fields and 

 orchards and on waste patches of weeds. In birds per square mile 

 they were about three times as common in orchards as in all the other 

 places taken together, their next apparent preference being for pasture- 

 lands, where, however, the sparrows averaged only 2^ to the square 

 mile and the goldfinches 39. 



Summary for Principal Species. 



Summarizing now the data for all these nine species taken to- 

 gether as one group, we find an average of 1755 birds to the square 

 mile of orchard, more than three fourths of this number English spar- 

 rows; 1 186 per square mile in pasture, nearly one third of them Eng- 

 lish sparrows; 394 to the square mile of plowed ground, 230 of these 

 being horned larks ; 373 to the square mile of corn, three fourths of 

 these English sparrows ; 308 to the square mile of meadow-lands, 

 where meadow-larks and cowbirds made each about a third of the 

 number; 231 to the square mile of stubble, about two fifths of them 

 meadow-larks; and 148 to the square mile of young wheat, of which 

 meadow-larks made nearly three fifths. This statement may be still 

 further generalized and simplified by saying that the number of these 

 birds per square mile varies in round numbers from 150 in young 

 wheat to eight times that number in pastures, and to nearly 12 times 

 the same number in orchards; and that the intervening ratios were 

 230 per square mile in stubble, 300 in meadows, 375 in corn, and 400 

 on plowed ground. 



