12 THE PASSENGER PIGEON IN PENNSYLVANIA 



Michigan. Entirely included within this boundary are 

 Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, West \ irginia. Kentucky 

 and Tennessee. From Lake St. Clair the belt of hard- 

 woods, including beech timber, extended in a north- 

 west direction to the northern peninsula ; thence west 

 to the head of Lake Superior in Alinnesota, and thence 

 north and east to the vicinity of James Ba}'. 



Throughout • this hardw^oocl belt the Passenger 

 Pigeons were known, and far beyond, when they 

 sought the foods of seasons when beech-mast could not 

 be obtained. In small flocks they spread abroad over 

 the adjacent forest and plain to procure subsistence. 

 Scouting flocks followed the receding snow line toward 

 the north, in spring, to locate their favorite food for 

 rearing their young. When it had been discovered in 

 vast quantities, the news spread and, flock by flock, 

 their fellows came, formed colonies in the secluded 

 nooks of the forest, near the heads of the brooks where 

 they loved to drink and bathe. 



Nests were prepared — flimsy affairs in the tree- 

 tops, consisting of platforms of twigs and sticks laid 

 across the branches and loosely bound together — as 

 soon as a colony had gathered in one spot. Other 

 wards assembled in other streams near the first colony, 

 until a city extended forty miles or more, along the 

 chain of hills from which the streams flowed to meet 

 some river or larger creek. The width of the city 

 might be two or three miles or much more, sometimes 

 twenty miles. P)etween the wards of the pigeon city 

 there were avenues in the forest where no nests were 



