Craig, Expressions of Emotion in Pigeons. Ji 



they always wake with the sun ; they begin to coo before leaving the 

 roost ; they are most active in the early morning, fighting and love- 

 making, cooing and calling and running about; they rest, or even 

 sleep, in the hottest part of the day; in the evening they are again 

 active and musical; they go to roost as soon as the light has begun 

 to fade; they frequently coo after going to roost; and, finally, while 

 strictly diurnal in their habits, and helpless at night as are most 

 diurnal birds, yet they may often be set cooing at night by the lighting 

 of a lamp, by a bright moon, by the cooing of oth.er birds, or perhaps 

 by their own inward inclination. 



In order to obtain a more complete record of the daily cycle during 

 incubation, I have more than once watched the birds continuously 

 for half a day at a time, noting every movement and every utterance, 

 now from before dawn until noon, and again from noon until night. 



Thus on July 2d I entered the room at 3.50 A. M. The birds 

 were still in their nocturnal positions, female on the nest, and male on 

 the perch. At 3.54, although there was not yet light enough to read 

 by, the male cooed four times ; the female in answer cooed four times ; 

 he cooed once at the end of her song. Then he preened his feathers. 

 Cooing and dressing the feathers always occupy the first part of the 

 day. The coos given were mainly of the perch-coo type, varied at 

 intervals by series of bowing-coos ; but at 5.09 A. M. the male turned 

 on his perch so as to get his head in a coTner," and gave the nest-call, 

 continuing until he had repeated it twenty-four times. Not until 

 5.36, or one hour and forty minutes after I first heard him coo, did 

 the male come down from his perch to feed. The female greeted 

 him with gently fluttering wings, and as he flew up on the perch and 

 down again, she again gave this sign of feminine affection. Thus 

 matters continued, with but little interruption, until at 8.19 A. M. 

 the male took his place on the nest. In these four and a half hours 

 from the time of waking to that o.f taking his place on the nest, the 

 male repeated his coo 487 times ! He gave about 70 bowing-coos, 

 386 perch-coos, and 24 nest-calls. The bowing and perch-coos were 

 given in 95 separate series, each series consisting of from one to ten 

 coos. The female during all this time cooed only once ; this once 

 was when, in answer to the male's song of four coos at da^vn she 



