2 JOURNAL OF MAINE ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



wings, as the Pigeons are startled from their perch on the dead 

 limbs overhead to take a quick, short flight to other branches 

 farther away and at greater height from the ground, displaying, as 

 they rise, their beautiful tails of white and gray to their fullest 

 advantage. Under date of June 13th, they are mentioned as still 

 frequenting the pines, with the belief expressed that they are breed- 

 ing. Unfortunately, June 28th is the last record I have of them, 

 which is merely "Wild Pigeons still common in the pines." My 

 memory serves me well enough to make me certain that the flock, 

 augmented by other individuals, inhabited the grove till well into 

 the season, and I fix the fact by a determination on my part that I 

 naturally would not have recorded, and that was to pot the whole 

 flock. Early in the fall I prepared a bed by raking over the soil in 

 a long, narrow strip, and sowing it with grain. The Pigeons came 

 readily to it, and I constructed a blind from which with a shot gun 

 I could sweep it fore and aft. One beautiful autumn day I sneaked 

 into this cover prepared for slaughter. The birds settled into place as 

 if by appointment, but to my surprise I could not bring myself to 

 press the trigger and I left them in peace. A pair of Pigeons that I 

 collected that summer are in the museum of Bridgton Academy, and, 

 while they probably belonged to this colony, I am glad to remember 

 that I shot them both outside of the pines' limits. 



According to Prof. Knight's "Birds of Maine", the latest record 

 of the Wild Pigeon in Maine is August i6th, 1896, at Dexter, but the 

 Journal of the Maine Ornithological Society, June, 1908, 

 records a female shot at Bar Harbor in 1904. Two years later William 

 Brewster writes that, in the opinion of some of his ornithological 

 friends, who have given the subject careful attention, the only living 

 birds of this species are a few captives in the possession of Prof. C. 

 O. Whitman, of Chicago. Think of the contrast ! In 1805^ 

 Audubon saw schooners at the New York wharves loaded in the 

 bulk with Wild Pigeons and selling at one cent each. Three years 

 later Alexander Wilson estimates a flock seen by him near Frank- 

 fort, Ky., as containing more than two billion individuals. 



Some of our old Maine attics still contain nets that helped 



