191 1 J Craig, Emotion in the Mourning Dove. 403 



the first bar of the song, but differing in that the three notes do not 

 glide into one another, there being a clear break from each note 

 to the next. The reader will see that this description would fit 

 the Swiss yodel, and in fact the call of the Mourning Dove is in 

 many instances a perfect yodel. However, in some cases the 

 three notes are not thus distinct, two of them or even all three 

 being slurred together. The following musical scores represent 

 the gradations of such slurring, progressively from No. 6 to No. 9. 

 (For No. 6 see p. 402.) 



No. 8. No. q. 



00 - 00 



|M 



:p= :fe=B--l»i« 



o - - 



Chest-tone. 



These samples show that the nest-call of the male is much more 

 variable than his song. 



The nest-call is given, as said before, usually in the nest, or in 

 some spot which is likely to be chosen as a nesting site. This is 

 true not only of the Mourning Dove but of pigeons in general; 

 and though the sound differs greatly from species to species, the 

 nest-calling attitude is much the same in all, the male sitting with 

 his body tilted forward, tail pointing up at a high angle, the head 

 so low that bill and crop may rest on the floor, or if the bird be in 

 the nest, the head is down in the hollow. Both the voice and the 

 attitude of the male serve to attract the female, for in all pigeons 

 the nest-call is accompanied by a gentle flipping of the wings, 

 ogling eyes, and a seductive turning of the head. In addition to 

 these general columbine gestures, Zenaidura has a special bit of 

 display of his own, for during the first note of the nest-call he 

 spreads his tail just enough to show conspicuously the white marks 

 on the outer feathers; soon as this first note is past, the tail closes 

 and the white marks disappear, to flash out again only with the 

 next repetition of the nest-call, before which there is always a con- 

 siderable interval. 



The nest-call of the female I have not often heard, and I am 

 unable to say how far it differs from that of the male. 



