8 



least minor importance. Their protection ought to be further 

 encouraged since they have been reported as eating the cotton 

 boll weevil; and, without exception, the farmers of Louisiana 

 nnd other cotton-raising states will gladly do anything to dimin- 

 ish the numbers of this pest. 



As stated before, the young of pigeons and doves are fed the 

 same diet as that which the adults eat. The feeding is done by 

 regurgitation, which act is practiced, among our birds, by only 

 the Ruby-Throated Humming Bird, outside of the family Colum- 

 hidae. A partial regurgitory act is found in the case of the Wax- 

 wings, Anipdidae, which, however, use their crop merely as a 

 receptacle to carry food, and not as a place w^here food is stored 

 to be partly digested. In their case insects are seldom carried in 

 the crop, it being used for berries and other small fruit. Insects 

 are, however, often fed to the young, yet these are carried in 

 the bill. The berries that are carried in the crop are regurgitated 

 singly and fed as such, instead of en masse, as the pigeons and 

 doves do. In the feeding of the young, the bill of the squab is 

 immersed down the throat of the adult, and the more or less 

 fluid substance, known as pigeon's milk, is drunk together with 

 the partly digested seeds as fast as it is regurgitated. 



Although doves are well known in those localities where they 

 are at all common, a few remarks about them in general may not 

 be out of place. They are found in all of the states, in fact, ex- 

 tend, during the breeding season, from iMexico and Cuba north- 

 ward to Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia. It spends the 

 winter from Southern Illinois and New York to Panama and the 

 Greater Antilles. E. W. Nelson says that in the northern part 

 of Illinois straggling parties are occasionally observed during the 

 winter. In some states they are quite rare, this being espe- 

 cially true of all New England; while in certain localities of 

 others they may be seen by the thousands. The breeding season 

 naturally varies in the different parts of the country, being gen- 

 erally later the further north one goes. Rudolph j\I. Anderson 

 (Birds of Iowa) states that "two or even three broods are raised 

 during the season. I have found eggs in Winnebago county in 

 all the months from April 30 to September 1." In Cameron 

 parish, although eggs have been found from April 1 to Septem- 

 ber 1. and adults taken on September 9, 1909, contained eggs 



