436 CAME BIRDS. WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



Dr. Townsend puts it in his Birds of Essex County, in the 

 Essex woods. 



The following is an extract from a letter written by 

 Governor Dudley to the Countess of Lincoln, March 12, 1630: 

 "Upon the eighth of March from after it was fair daylight, un- 

 til about eight of the clock in the forenoon, there flew over all 

 the towns in our plantations, so many flocks of doves, each 

 flock containing many thousands and some so many that they 

 obscured the light, that it passeth credit, if but the truth 

 should be written." ^ 



Higginson, writing of Salem about this date, apparently 

 makes the same statement in nearly the same words. In 

 Charles Brooks's History of Medford, Mass. (p. 37), we find 

 the following occurrence recorded on March 8, 1631: "Flocks 

 of wild pigeons this day, so thick they obscure the light." 

 Apparently these were the first large flights of pigeons of 

 which we have definite record in New England. 



The Plymouth colony was threatened with famine in 

 1643, when great flocks of Pigeons swept down upon the 

 ripened corn and beat down and ate "a very great quantity 

 of all sorts of English grain." But Winthrop says that in 

 1648 they came again after the harvest was gathered, and 

 proved a great blessing, "it being incredible what multitudes 

 of them were killed daily." ^ 



Roger Williams (1643) says that the Pigeons bred abun- 

 dantly in Rhode Island in the "Pigeon Countrie." Josselyn 

 (1672), who had a general acquaintance with the New Eng- 

 land colonies, and who lived in Massacliusetts and Maine for 

 some years, states that of Pigeons there were "millions of 

 millions; I have seen," he asserts, "a flight of Pidgeons in 

 the spring, and at Michaelmas when they return back to the 

 Southward for four or five miles, that to my thinking had neither 

 beginning nor ending, length nor breadth, and so thick that 

 I could see no Sun.^ . . . But of late they are much dimin- 

 ished, the English taking them with Nets." 



The latter statement shows that the extirpation of these 



1 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, Vol. VHI, 1st ser., p. 45. 



2 Winthrop, John: The History of New England from 1630 to K49. James Savage, editor, 1825- 

 26, Vol. 11, pp. 94,331, 332. 



3 Josselyn, John: Two Voyages to New England, 1865, p. 79. 



