THE MOURNING DOVE AS A GAME BIRD 3 



can winter, make either a very short mifrratory flio;ht or none at all. 

 In the early days of the admhiistration of the i\lit;i'atory Bird Treaty 

 Act this fact caused some complications. Hunters attempted to 

 prove that the dove was a resident species and so was not subject to 

 Federal regulation. In 1921, however, the Federal court at Athens, 

 Ga., decided that the mournhig dove as a species is a migratory bird 

 and that it is entitled to the protection afforded by the Migratory 

 Bird Treaty Act, even though individual doves may remain yearlong 

 within the borders of certain States. 



Since that time, chiefly through the banding method, much new 

 information has been obtained, all of which gives powerful support 

 to the judicial decision cited. Considering only the region repre- 

 sented by the Southeastern States of Georgia, Florida, Alabama, 

 Mississippi, and Louisiana (there being hundreds of recovery records 

 from those States of doves that were banded in Manitoba, North 

 Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, 

 Ohio, Ontario, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Massachu- 

 setts), it may be truthfully said that during the winter the South- 

 eastern States are the custodians of most of the doves that belong to 

 all the people of the eastern United States and Canada. Also it 

 should be noted particularly that few of the doves banded in the 

 Northern States and Provinces mentioned have been recovered either 

 in Mexico or on any of the West Indian islands. These eastern 

 mourning doves are strictly North American and when records of 

 them are plotted on a map, concentration in the Southeast is strikingly 

 revealed. 



Banding records of doves nesting in the Great Plains, Eocky 

 Mountain, and Pacific Coast regions reveal a more normal north-and- 

 south migration, many of the recoveries being from points well south 

 in Mexico; these are records chiefly of the western mourning dove 



BREEDING 



Sound management of the mourning dove as of other game species 

 must give full weight to breeding habits. With this widely distrib- 

 uted, and in the south almost perennially breeding, species, however, 

 it is doubtful whether perfect management can ever be attamed. 

 Nevertheless, public interest and humanitarian principles alike 

 demand that this objective be achieved as nearly as possible. 



The great difficulty lies in the fact that while doves normally lay 

 but two eggs to a setting (fig. 2), they are multi-brooded, that is, 

 a single pair of bii-ds may produce several broods each season. Even 

 in the most northern parts of the breeding range two broods are com- 

 mon, while in the South there may be as many as five or six. Building 

 the nest, incubating the eggs, and caring for the squabs (fig. 3) require 

 a period slightly longer than one month. 



In the Southeastern States it is probable that some nesting occurs 

 during every month of the year. Even as far north as Virginia the 

 a^,uthor on one occasion found a dove incubating her eggs on February 

 22. In the com'se of exhaustive studies by Allen M. Pearson and 

 George C. Moore in Alabama (the results of which are applicable as 

 well to other States of the Southeast),^ the earliest date on which a 



1 The Mourning Dove in Alabama, by George C. Moore and Allen M. Pearson. Alabama Cooperative 

 Wildlife Research Unit, Auburn. 36 pp., 3 maps, 4 graphs, and numerous photographs. July 1941. 



