PIGEONS AND DUVES 



39 



Twenty-five or thirty years ago, men made a 

 business of netting Band-tailed Pigeons in the 

 Willamette valley, Oregon, for the market. Mr. 

 O. G. Dalaba of Corvallis, Oregon, says that he 

 caught a great many in the coast hills in the early 

 nineties. He says he got twenty-five dozen birds 

 at one spring of the net at Eddyville and many 

 others got away. -At that time, they were shipped 

 to Portland and San Francisco by way of 

 steamers from Yaquina Bay. He shipped as 

 many as eighty dozen at a time. The birds were 

 accustomed to collect around mineral springs 

 or at watering places at certain seasons of the 

 year. 



During the winter of 191 1 and I')1J. iMr. W. 



Lee Chambers reported an immense flight of 

 Band-tailed Pigeons from Paso Robles south to 

 Xordhoff all tlirough the coast mountains. Great 

 numbers of the birds were killed and shipped to 

 San Francisco and Los Angeles. One hunter 

 shipped over two thousand birds. A great many 

 hunters from all through southern California 

 turned out daily to shoot Pigeons. This was a 

 good example of a certain time and place where 

 perhaps a large portion of the existing numbers 

 of Pigeons collect together and stay about in one 

 locality until they are practically destroyed. It 

 would take very few occurrences like this to 

 exterminate the species. 



• William L. Finley. 



PASSENGER PIGEON 

 Ectopistes migratorius {Linucciis) 



:\. O. U. Number 315 See Color I'late 42 



Other Names. — \Vild Pigeon ; Pigeon ; Wood Pigeon ; 



Red-brcastod Pigeon ; Blue-headed Pigeon. 



General Description. — Length, 17 inches. Pre- 

 vailing color above, grayish-blue; below, reddish-fawn. 

 Tail, very long, graduated for more than half its length. 

 the feathers (12 in number) narrowed terminally and 

 obtusely pointed ; wings, long and pointed. 



Color. — Adult M.jiLe: Head, including nape, plain 

 bluish-gray, paler on chin and upper throat; hindneck 

 similar, but glossed with golden or coppery-bronze ; 

 the sides of neck, brilliant golden-bronze changing to 

 metallic purple-bronze; back, slate-gray tinged with 

 grayish-brown or olive-brown ; shoulders and inner 

 secondaries, grayish-brown, some of the former with 

 a large oblong black spot (mostly concealed) on outer 

 web, the rear shoulder-feathers also with inner web 

 edged with black ; inner wing-coverts, similar in color 

 to shoulders but usually slightly (often distinctly) more 

 grayish, passing on outer coverts into slate-gray ; outer 

 secondaries, dull brownish-black or dusky, usually nar- 

 rowly edged terminally with paler ; primary coverts 

 and primaries, dark grayish-brown, the latter (except 

 outermost) narrowly margined with dull whitish, the 

 edgings on outer web growing much broader basally, 

 and often orange-cinnamon, at least in part; lower back 

 and upper rump, clear bluish-gray, passing into more 

 brownish-gray on upper tail-coverts; middle pair of 

 tail-feathers, darker brownish-gray passing into dusky 

 terminally; ne.\t pair with outer web light gray, inner 

 web white, the next three pairs similar but with white 

 of inner web passing into pale gray basally. the outer- 

 most with outer web white — all (except middle pair) 

 with a sub-basal roundish black spot on inner web, 

 preceded by a spot of cinnamon-rufous; lower throat, 



foreneck, chest, breast, and sides, plain reddish-fawn 

 color, passing into white on abdomen, anal region, and 

 under tail-coverts ; bill, black ; iris, scarlet or scarlet- 

 vermilion ; bare eye space, livid flesh color; legs and 

 feet, lake-red or pinkish-red. Adult Fem.\le: Dis- 

 tinctly duller in plumage than the adult male: the head, 

 more brownish-gray; the back, shoulders, and second- 

 aries, more decidedly brownish ; the shoulders and wing- 

 coverts, more heavily spotted with black; the reddish- 

 fawn color of the foreneck and rest of under parts, 

 replaced by light drab, passing into pale drab-gray on 

 breast and sides and metallic gloss of hindneck and 

 sides of neck less brilliant; iris, orange or orange-red; 

 bare eye space, pale grayish-blue ; legs and feet, paler 

 lake-red than in adult male. 



Nest and Eggs.— Nest: Before its extermination, 

 nested in myriads ; in the extensive forests sometimes 

 fifty or more of their frail structures of twigs seen in 

 a single tree. Eggs : I or 2, pure white. 



Distribution. — Now extinct, the last living specimen 

 having died in the Cincinnati Zoological Garden, Sep- 

 tember I, 1914. Formerly perhaps the most numerous 

 of all birds, inhabiting practically the whole forested 

 area of eastern North .America, breeding northward to 

 middle western Keewatin, northern Ontario. Quebec, 

 northern Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, 

 southward to Kansas, northern Mississippi, Kentucky, 

 and Pennsylvania ; migrating southward to the Gulf 

 coast (Florida to Texas), casually to Cuba, eastern 

 Me.xico, and Guatemala ; westward regularly, along the 

 Missouri River to eastern Montana and to western 

 Texas, accidentally to Nevada, Wyoming, eastern Ore- 

 gon, western Washington, and British Columbia; acci- 

 dental in British Isles, Europe, and the Bermudas. 



