92 THE PASSENGER PIGEON IN PENNSYLVANIA 



into the woods and chop down sucli trees as contained 

 the greater number of nests, catch or pick up the 

 young birds and at once divest them o'f their crops. 

 Bushel baskets full of these were brought to the house 

 and emptied upon the ground. The women and chil- 

 dren would remove the coarser pin-feathers and vis- 

 cera and pack the squabs in tubs and barrels contain- 

 ing brine. Whether pickled squab was much of a 

 luxury I never had an opportunity of knowing, as^my 

 parents were not disposed today by a supply of the 

 city lumps. 



Soon after this my parents moved to Tioga county, 

 ISIew York, and the only knowledge I had for some 

 years of the pigeons was that gained from seeing 

 transitory flocks that nearly every year visited wheat 

 and buckwheat fields, the former after the harvest, 

 and. the latter after the grain had been cut and set up 

 in bunches to dry before threshing. These stray flocks 

 would be coming and going for a number of days ; but 

 from whence they came or where they went nobody 

 seemed to know or care then, as their was no means 

 of readily ascertaining. It may be safely assumed 

 that they were portions of a nesting flock hundreds of 

 miles away in the south or southwest. As far as I 

 have been able to learn, pigeons never nested in the 

 wilds of northern or western Pennsylvania in the fall. 

 They usually nested there in the spring after the danger 

 had passed. 



Ever since I had seen pigeons in their nesting place 

 when a child too young to carry away anything but a 



