THE LOST DOVE 



brought up to become a dove of grace and beauty. That 

 would take food. 



But you must not think to see Sire and Dame Dove 

 come flying home with seeds or nuts or fruit or grain or 

 earthworms or insects in their beaks. What else, then, 

 could they bring? Well, nothing at all, indeed, in their 

 beaks; for the food of a baby dove requires especial 

 preparation. It has to be provided for him in the crop 

 of his parent. So Dame Dove would come with empty 

 beak but full crop, and the baby would be fed. Just 

 exactly how, I have not seen written by those people 

 who saw a million Passenger Pigeons. Perhaps they did 

 not stop to notice. 



However, if you will watch a tame pigeon feed its 

 young, you can guess how a wild one would do it. A 

 tame mother-pigeon that I am acquainted with comes 

 to her young (she has two) and, standing in or beside 

 the nest, opens her beak very wide. One of her babies 

 reaches up as far as he can stretch his neck and puts his 

 beak inside his mother's mouth. He tucks it in at one 

 side and crowds in his head as far as he can push it. 

 Then the mother makes a sort of pumping motion, and 

 pumps up soft baby food from her crop, and he swallows 

 it. Sometimes he keeps his beak in his mother's mouth 

 for as long as five minutes ; and if anything startles her 

 and she pulls away, the hungry little fellow scolds and 



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