ECTOPISTUS MIGRATORIUS : PASSENGER PIGEON. 139 



FAMILY COLUMBID^E: PIGEONS. 

 PASSENGER PIGEON: WILD PIGEON. 



ECTOPISTES MIGRATORIUS (L.) Sw. 



Chars. Tail, 12-feathered, long and wedge-shaped ; outer tail- 

 feathers black, white and chestnut. Neck with metallic irides- 

 cence. Wing-coverts spotted with black. Male with the under 

 parts pale purplish-red, fading behind, the sides grayish-blue like 

 the upper parts. Female and young lacking the rich color of the 

 breast, which is grayish, more like the upper parts. Bill, black. 

 Eyes and feet, red. Length, about 16.00 ; wing, 8.00-9.00 ; tail 

 little less. 



Comparatively few of the descendants of myriads 

 which in former generations of passenger pigeons dark- 

 ened the air in New England are left to us now, 

 though thousands still appear among us during the 

 migrations, and some of them still construct the open- 

 work platforms of twigs, through the interstices of which 

 you may from below observe the snowy white egg or 

 pair of eggs entrusted to these frail receptacles. Civili- 

 zation has pushed the Pigeons before it, by depriving 

 them to a great extent of the formerly inexhaustible 

 store of mast they enjoyed, for which the fields of buck- 

 wheat or other cultivated grains are no adequate substi- 

 tute. The greatest flights and roosts of Pigeons we 

 now hear of are in the Northwestern States, say the 

 upper Mississippi Valley at large where the numbers 

 of the birds are still prodigious, furnishing no incon- 

 siderable commercial item, as well as the usual substi- 



