ORDER XI. PIGEONS AND DOVES. 



COLUMB^E. 



Family 1. PIGEONS and DOVES. COLUMBIM:. 13 species, 3 

 subspecies. 



Pigeons are distributed throughout the greater part of the globe, but 

 their center of abundance appears to be in the Malay Archipelago, 

 where about one hundred and twenty of the some three hundred 

 known species are found. One hundred or more species have been 

 described from the New World but only twelve of these inhabit North 

 America. 



The various races of domestic Pigeons, 'Pouters,' 'Fantails,' etc. are 

 descendants of the Rock Dove of Europe, modified in form and habit 

 through the selection by the breeder or 'fancier.' 



Pigeons build a flimsy, platform nest of twigs and lay two white 

 eggs. Both sexes incubate, one relieving the other at certain hours 

 each day. The young are born naked and are fed by regurgitation, 

 on 'Pigeons' milk,' the parent thrusting its bill into the mouth of its 

 young and discharging therein food which has been softened in its own 

 crop. 



Some species of Pigeons nest in isolated pairs, others in large colo- 

 nies, but it is the habit of many species to gather in large flocks after 

 the nesting season. 



The Wild or Passenger Pigeon, once so abundant in this county, was 

 found in flocks throughout the year. Alexander Wilson, the 'father of 

 American Ornithology' writing about 1808, estimated that a flock of 

 Wild Pigeons seen by him near Frankfort, Kentucky, contained at 

 least 2, 230,272,000^ individuals. Audubon writes that in 1805 he saw 

 schooners at the wharves in New York city loaded in bulk with Wild 

 Pigeons caught up the Hudson River, which were sold at one cent each. 



As late as 1876 or 1877 there was a colony of nesting Wild Pigeons 

 in Michigan, which was twenty-eight miles long and averaged three or 

 four miles in width, and in 1881 the birds were still so abundant in 

 parts of the Mississippi Valley that the writer saw thousands of birds, 

 trapped in that region, used in a Pigeon match near New York City. 



Today, however, as a result of constant persecution, the Wild Pigeon 

 is so rare that the observation of a single individual is noteworthy. 



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