316 Townsend, Notes on the Rock Dove. [juiy 



chop vigorously at the ground with their bills causing the earth to 

 fly and making in some cases holes of considerable size. In a 

 garden where numerous strings were stretched which kept away the 

 crows, the Pigeons alighted without fear in the network and chopped 

 holes in the ground to obtain the seeds. On weedy lawns and 

 fields flocks of Pigeons often alight, spread out and systematically 

 eat the weed seeds. Saunders x says of the wild birds that they 

 make amends for their fondness for grain by eating weed seeds and 

 the roots of the conch grass ( Triticum repens). I have seen Pigeons 

 walking along ploughed furrows picking up and eating earthworms 

 and various larva? exposed. Dr. Glover M. Allen tells me that a few 

 winters ago after a heavy snow fall he observed Pigeons clinging to 

 the Japanese ivy vines on University Hall in Cambridge eating the 

 ivy berries and Mr. Charles F. Batchelder reports seeing a Pigeon 

 perched in a privet bush eating the berries. 



On Boston Common it is the custom of visitors to feed the 

 Pigeons with bread crumbs and grain as is done at St. Marks in 

 Venice and at various other cities. The birds flock about in great 

 numbers and alight on the hands, shoulders and heads of the feed- 

 ers. This familiarity does not necessarily point to the former 

 domesticated state of this bird, for in the same place grey squirrels 

 respond to feeding by nuts in a similar manner, and fearlessly 

 clamber over their benefactor, and investigate his pockets to the 

 astonishment of the rustic visitor, who is familiar with the same 

 animal only at a long gun-shot range. This and the photographs 

 shown us by such men as Harold Baynes point to the millennium 

 for the bird lover when the gun shall have vanished and live birds 

 be treated by everybody as real friends. 



1 loc. cit. 



