PIGEONS 139 



Distribution. Transition zone, from British Columbia south through 

 Mexico to Guatemala, eastward to Colorado and to western Texas. 



Nest. When eggs are not laid on the ground or in the nest of some 

 other bird, a slight platform of twigs on the flat limb of a tree. Eggs : 1 

 or 2, white. 



Food. Mainly acorns, but also young sycamore balls, grain, wild ber- 

 ries, such as elder, salmon, pigeon, mulberry, and manzanita ; and honey 

 from the century plant flowers. 



Though the band -tailed pigeons are sometimes common in the 

 large river-bottoms where cottonwood balls, alder seeds, and berries 

 abound, they live mainly on mast and breed principally on the edge 

 of Upper Sonoran zone where the oaks and pines intermingle. The 

 acorn crop of the year apparently governs their movements. In 

 good acorn winters, Mr. Grinnell says, they sometimes appear in 

 flocks of hundreds in the oak regions of southern California. Near 

 Seattle, Mr. Rathbon reports, they are in need of protection, as they 

 are hunted so continuously that they are in danger of becoming rare 

 birds. 



At Beaverton, Oregon, Mr. Anthony has found them abundant 

 around a mineral spring, and in the arid mountains of the southwest 

 they gather, often in large numbers, at the springs and water holes. 

 When they come flying in to water the noise of their wings is star- 

 tling. It is a loud flapping, as different from the musical whirr of 

 the mourning dove as their heavy flight is from the light swerving 

 flight of the dove, and as the square tail is from the long pointed 

 ,one of the dove. Though the noise made by the wings of fasciata 

 is striking at all times, when one of the birds projects himself down 

 a mountain-side on his way to water, the sound produced has been 

 compared to the escape of steam from an engine. 



The band on their tails shows sometimes at a turn in flight, but 

 most conspicuously on alighting, for then they spread their tails, 

 and at a distance the band looks almost white. 



If you follow the pigeons to their breeding-grounds in some re- 

 mote canyon you will be struck by the owl-like hooting that fills the 

 place, and you will locate the sound here and there along the sides 

 of the canyon at dead treetops, in each of which a solitary male is 

 sunning himself, at intervals puffing out his breast and hooting. 

 The hooting varies considerably. Sometimes it is a calm whoo'-hoo- 

 hoo, whoo'-hoo-hoo, at others a spirited hoop' '-ah-whoo' ', and again a two 

 syllabled whoo'-ugh, made up of a short hard hoot and a long coo, as 

 if the breath was sharply expelled for the first note and drawn in for 

 the second. 



The breeding season has been said to cover nearly every month of 

 the year in Arizona, and in the Guadalupe Mountains, Texas, we 

 found nests with eggs the latter part of August. 



