250 Bird - Lore 



same bird who had been held and photographed a year before. — George 

 Roberts, Jr., Lake Forest, Ills. 



[This is a good example of the interesting results being obtained by banding birds. 

 The bands have proven not only that birds come back to the same place to nest 

 each year, but likewise that some, at least, spend each winter in the same place. — A. A. A ] 



FRIENDLY PIGEONS 



We three girls, Helen, Julia, and Frances Holt, live in the city of Portland, 

 Maine. But we have a big lawn with lots of trees and bushes and a large garden. 

 We see many birds. We have a Canary and about forty Pigeons. 



About two years ago a very handsome male Pigeon, with his mate, appeared. 

 They seemed to be asking for food, because they timidly came on our porch 

 and peeked in the window at us. We all went down to our uncle and we each 

 took home a handful of oats. (He uses oats for his horses and pigeons.) When 

 we got home we put the oats on our lawn and hid to see what would happen. 

 Very soon the male came slowly down and looked at the food. It was about 

 five minutes before he timidly took one grain of oats. Then he stopped being 

 afraid of it and ate greedily until it was all gone. We used our three handfuls 

 of oats all up, so we asked father to get us some more. He bought us a big 

 bag of oats. 



The next day we noticed the pair of Pigeons taking sticks to our gutter 

 right over the pipe that took the water down to the ground. We could see the 

 female on her nest from our attic window. All went well for a few days until 

 a storm came. The gutter was full of water that couldn't go down the pipe 

 because the nest stopped it up. The poor Pigeon would have been drowned 

 if she had stayed there, so very regretfully she left her three precious eggs. 

 Gradually the sticks went down the pipe and the eggs followed. 



About two or three days later she built another nest. This time it was on 

 a neighbor's house next door. There she raised her family in safety. One even- 

 ing we had some peanuts and we took them outdoors to eat. We left them on 

 a bench while we went indoors a minute, and when we came back they were all 

 gone. Who did it? The Pigeons ! We went in and got some more and he nearly 

 ate them out of our hands. In about a week we had trained Pidgeony (the 

 male) and Ridgeony (the female) to eat out of our hands when we placed 

 them on the grass. In about a month they would fly up on our hands when we 

 held them out level with our necks with peanuts on them. The Pigeons in- 

 creased to thirty and then to forty. We named almost all of them. They 

 stayed with us two years and are still here. 



The next spring a Chipping Sparrow built on a low little spruce tree. 

 We visited it too often so the birds moved their nest into a barberry bush on 

 the border of our garden. One night we were called over to see an egg on the 

 sidewalk near the front of our house. We examined it and found it to be a 



