408 Bl\LLETIN 10 2, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Miss A. R. Sherman, who has had ample opportunity to study the 

 mourning dove and a wide experience as a field observer, gives in her 

 notes the period of incubation definitely as 15 days. 



Plumages. — [Author's note: The young squab is fat and unat- 

 tractive, scantily covered with short, white down, through which 

 the }rellowish skin shows. The stiff quills of the juvenal plumage 

 soon appear, giving the young bird an ugly, spiny appearance. The 

 juvenal plumage is well developed before the young birds leave the 

 well-filled nest. In this plumage the upper parts are " buffy brown " 

 to " snuff brown," with faint, whitish edgings on the back and wing 

 coverts; the scapulars and some of the inner wing coverts have large 

 black patches; the underparts are from" pinkish cinnamon " to " light 

 vinaceous-cinnamon," paler on the belly and grayer on the flanks. 

 A postj u venal molt of the contour plumage and tail, during fall, 

 produces a first winter plumage, which is like the adult but somewhat 

 duller. Adults have a complete molt in fall.] 



Food. — Adult mourning doves are essentially seedeaters. Wheat 

 and buckwheat are said to be their favorite grains, but they consume 

 such enormous numbers of weed seeds that they prove to be a highly 

 beneficial species, as the following quotation from Dutcher (1903) 

 shows : 



The examination of the contents of 237 stomachs of the dove shows over 99 

 Tier cent of its food consists wholly of vegetable matter in the shape of seeds, 

 less than 1 per cent being animal food. Wheat, oats, rye, corn, barley, and 

 buckwheat were found in 150 of the stomachs, and constituted 32 per cent of the 

 total food. However, three-fourths of this amount was waste grain picked 

 up in the fields after the harvesting was over. Of the various grains eaten, 

 wheat is the favorite, and is almost the only one taken when it is in good condi- 

 tion, and most of this was eaten in the months of July and August. Corn, 

 the second in amount, was all old damaged grain taken from the fields after 

 the harvest, or from roads or stock yards in summer. The principal and almost 

 constant diet, however, is the seeds of weeds. These are eaten at all seasons 

 of the near. In one stomach were found 7,500 seeds of the yellow wood-sorrel 

 (Oxalis strieta), in another, 6,400 seeds of barn grass or fox tail (Chaetocloa) . 



Wayne (1910) records this interesting observation on the dove's 

 feeding habits : 



Although this species is supposed to feed upon the ground, this is by no means 

 always the case as the birds resort to the pine woods for weeks at a time 

 to feed upon the seeds of these trees, which they obtain by walking out on the 

 limbs and extracting them from the cones. The flesh at this time is very 

 strongly impregnated with a piney flavor. 



Behavior. — Although mourning doves spend a large part of the 

 year in flocks, they have a strong tendency in spring to separate into 

 pairs and scatter over the country to nest. Doubtless they owe their 

 present status, perhaps even their existence, to this habit, for, had 

 they bred in colonies as the passenger pigeon did, the doves would 



