96 Bird -Lore 



gether more than the others, for all Pigeons are gregarious. The number of 

 Passenger Pigeons being small, there was little opportunity for them to show 

 their extreme flocking tendency. The old accounts tell us that in the great 

 roosts some Pigeons alighted on the backs of those who had found perches; 

 but this was probably only temporary and for lack of room, and I am sure 

 the one alighted on must have resented it with angry voice and a struggle to 

 throw the other off his back. 



PASSENGER PIGEON'S NEST AND EGG 



The noise made by the Pigeons in their great breedmg colonies, as we 

 are told by those who witnessed them, was deafenmg. Now, the Passenger 

 Pigeon's voice was very different from the voice of any other Pigeon. It had 

 little of the soft, cooing notes so familiar in all sorts of Doves, but showed 

 extreme development of the hard, unmusical notes which in most Doves 

 are subordinate to the coo. This peculiarity seems to have been an adapta- 

 tion to life in such extremely populous and hence noisy communities, where 

 soft notes could scarcely be heard, and a bird had literally to scream in order 

 to gain a hearing. 



Let us examine the bird's various notes in more detail, for they are inter- 

 esting. The most characteristic utterance of the species was a voluble stream 

 of 'talking,' which ever varied with the mood of the bird,— now rising into 

 a loud, shrill scolding, now sinking into a soft, low clucking, and sometimes 

 dimim'shing into single clucks. In addition to this voluble flow of talk, the 

 male sometimes shouted one or two single, emphatic notes sounding like 

 a loud keck, keck. All these sounds were full of meaning and expression. And 



