98 G. II. Merriam — Birds of Connecticut. 



172. Zeiisedura Caroliliensis (Linne) Bonaparte. Carolina Dove; 



"Turtle Dove." 



A rather common summer resident, sometimes remaining through 

 the winter (Jan. 15, 1874; 10, 1875, Grinnell). Arrives early in 

 May (May 5, 1875, shot, Sage). On May 24th, 1S76, I found a neat 

 containing two fresh eggs, on a maple sapling, fifteen feet above the 

 ground. In the south and west they generally, though by no means 

 exclusively, breed on the ground.* In central Massachusetts I have 

 taken it as late as the middle of November (1873). It is particularly 

 abundant throughout the far west, and near the Pacific coast has 

 been seen as far north as " lat. 49° in summer, while a few winter in 

 California"! about San Francisco, latitude 38°. Mr. Stadtniiiller 

 found a nest of this species, about twelve feet from the ground, in a 

 pine grove, near New Haven, June 20th, 1874. "It was close to the 

 trunk of the tree, and consisted of a few sticks placed loosely on top 

 of a common squirrel's nest, and contained one egg and one young 

 dove. I took the egg and four weeks later went to get the nest, but 

 found another egg in it." J Surely the squirrel's nest must have been 

 deserted, or it would hardly have constituted a safe base for bird's 

 eggs. 



Note. — The Wild Turkey, Meleagris gallopavo, var. Americana 

 (Bartram) Cones, long since exterminated from this State, was once com- 

 mon here. Wild Turkies were plenty in 1780, and occasionally seen as 

 late as 1790.§ Regarding their former abundance in New England, 

 one Thomas Morton, of Clifford's Inn, Gent., wrote (printed by 

 Charles Green, in 1632): "Turkies there are, which divers times in 

 great flocks have sallied by our doores ; and then a gunne (being 

 commonly in a redinesse) salutes them with such a courtesie, as makes 

 them take a turne in the Cooke roome. They daunce by the doore s.» 

 well. Of these there hath bin killed, that have weighed forty-eight 

 pound a peece. They are by mainy degrees sweeter than the tame 

 Turkies of England, feede them how you can. I had a salvage who 

 hath taken out his boy in a morning, and they have brought home 



* Vide : Coues' Birds of the Northwest, p. 389, 1874; Allen. Bull. Mus. Oomp. Zool., 

 vol. Hi, No. 6, p. 170, 1872: Cooper, Ornithology of California, p. 513, 1870; Mer- 

 riam, Zool. Report in 6th Annual Report U. S. Geol. Survey Terr., p. 710, 1872; Hen- 

 shaw, Report upon Ornithological Specimens, p. 08, 1874. 



\ Cooper, Ornithology of California, p. 513, 1870. 



t MS. notes of the Stadtmuller Brothers. 



§ A Statistical Account of the County of Middlesex, in Connecticut, by David D. 

 Field, p. 19. 1819. 



