555 
The typical diet of the Wild Pigeon is acorns, and the birds used form- 
erly to be abundant on the oak-bordered prairies of Steilacoom, and on the 
southeast corner of Vancouver Island; but our northwestern oak (Quercus 
garryana) is not prodigal of acorns, having its hands full fighting parasites, so 
that the main dependence of Pigeons hereabouts has always been berries and 
vetches, with the lesser ground forage. Wild cherries, salmon berries (Rubus 
Spectabilis), and red elder-berries (Sambucus callicarpa) are favorite num- 
bers, while huckleberries, blackberries, and raspberries are not omitted. In 
Whatcom County I have found them feeding heavily upon the sweetish berries 
of the Cascara sagrada (Rhamnus purshiana). ‘They have also a great fond- 
ness for mineral earths, and resort to the salt-impregnated edges of tide flats, 
like Londoners to Bath. 
The summer season of this species becomes shorter as one proceeds north- 
ward. In southern Arizona the bird is resident and nests at any season, rais- 
ing, no doubt, several broods in the course of a year. At the latitude of the 
Columbia River, Pigeons appear from the South in April, and linger until 
October or even November; while at Blaine the birds do not appear before 
May 5th, nor are they found after the middle of September. Hence, it is 
evident that in southern Washington they may raise two broods, but further 
north only one. 
Pigeons have no taste for architecture, and the nesting season appears to 
overtake them, as it were, unawares. They still maintain a loose colonial 
arrangement, and assemble at favorite feeding resorts thruout the nesting sea- 
son, but nests are seldom placed so near as adjoining trees. The eggs, sometimes 
two in number, but usually only one, are often laid upon the bare ground of 
an oak grove, hop-field, or clearing, without pretense of nest. Usually, how- 
ever, the nest consists of a handful of sticks, laid crosswise in the semblance 
of a platform; and this is placed in a fir sapling at a height of ten or twenty 
feet, resting against the stem of the tree or upon a horizontal branch. But 
there are no hard and fast rules to be laid down. Professor O. B. Johnson, 
in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, found a nest “of leaves and moss beside a 
tree, placed on the ground between two roots; another one upon an old stump 
that had been split and broken about eight feet from the ground; another was 
in the top of a fir (Abies grandis), and was built of twigs laid upon the dense 
flat limb of the tree, about one hundred and eighty feet from the ground.” 
Stranger tales come from the Huachuca Mountains in Arizona. Mr. 
Otho C. Poling found? that the female, when disturbed, was able to remove 
the egg from the nest, and to transport it safely by holding it between the 
legs and imbedded in the feathers of the abdomen. On several occasions he 
shot birds thus accompanied by eggs, externally carried, and believed that in 
a. Bendire: Life Hist. N. A. Birds, Vol. I., p. 124 ff. 
