CHAPTER XXXIV. 



STRAY PASSENGER PIGEONS. 



Reported by a Rochester Observer Familiar With 

 the Birds. 



From New York Sun, January, 1919. 



To the Editor of the Sun : 



Sir : — I have seen Passenger Pigeons more or less 

 frequently for the last fifteen years in the vicinity of 

 Rochester. I am familiar with the Passenger Pigeon; 

 in the town where as a boy I used to spend my sum- 

 mers, Winona, Minn-, there was a shooting club that 

 used to shoot pigeons from traps and the pigeons use^ 

 were wild pigeons. 



The shooting stand was in front of a small grand 

 stand on the local race track, and the entire space 

 underneath the stand was divided into two places by 

 laths and was filled with wild pigeons, which were 

 trapped. We boys with our guns used to post our- 

 selves around the outskirts of the race track, and any 

 pigeon that escaped the trap-shooters was pretty sure 

 to get his. 



I shot them as a boy as they were roosting on tele- 

 graph wires in the street that ran by my uncle's resi- 

 dence and had many of them as pets and tried to raise 

 them and breed them. Thus I am very familiar with 

 the birds. So is my wife. 



This summer I saw four, one flying, one perched 

 sigly on a telegraph wire — a cock — and in September 

 I saw two perched on a telegraph wire in the vicinity 



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