PIGEON'S, DOVES, BITTERN'S, ETC. 343 



set, as a pigeonry which is deserted one "week may be 

 occupied again the next. 



After all the mast in a pigeonry has been eaten up, 

 the old birds start on foraging expeditions at daylight, 

 and some go so far that they do not retnrn until mid- 

 night. The distance the latter traverse in that time must 

 be very great, "when we consider how swiftly they can fly. 

 One of the greatest wonders connected with these birds 

 is the instinctive manner in which they find their own 

 nests at any hour of the night, although they are the 

 counterpart of millions of others in the neighborhood. As 

 soon as the pigeons take up their residence in a forest, 

 the men and boys in the neighboring districts arm them- 

 selves with guns and clubs and saliy forth to deal destruc- 

 tion among them. Those who have guns shoot them 

 all night, and those possessing clubs climb the trees and 

 knock them down as fast as they can. Thousands upon 

 thousands are slaughtered in a night in this manner, yet it 

 does not seem to diminish their numbers from year to year. 

 Sportsmen generally take their stands in glades and shoot 

 the birds as they fly to and from their roosts each morn- 

 ing and evening, and though this is somewhat better than 

 killing them on their perches, yet the destruction is al- 

 most equally as great, owing to the density of the flights. 

 Vast numbers are also caught alive by netters, for the 

 purpose of being used in pigeon tournaments, or to be 

 kept until they are wanted for market. The netters some- 

 times pay the owner of forest land from ten to a hun- 

 dred dollars for a spot where the flight is good, or for a 

 drinking place or salt marsh which the birds frequent 

 regularly. Their first movement is to bait the ground 

 with salt, and then to set their seines. When everything 

 is ready, they conceal themselves, and wait until the first 

 pigeon arrives and announces the finding of the bait. 

 The moment it does that, they make preparations for 

 casting. The satisfied piping of the discoverer of the 



