118 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



same reason that they ate the white pine seed at the 

 same season, when it is not there ! They might find a 

 little of the last adhering to the pitch.) 



June 14, 1860. See a pigeon.^ 



Se'pt. 4, 1860. Saw flocks of pigeons the 2d and 3d. 



MOURNING DOVE ; TURTLE DOVE 



July 12, 1852. The turtle dove flutters before you 

 in shady wood-paths, or looks out with extended neck, 

 losing its balance, slow to leave its perch. 



Sept. 27, 1852. It must have been a turtle dove that 

 eyed me so near, turned its head sideways to me for a 

 fair view, looking with a St. Vitus twitching of its neck, 

 as if to recover its balance on an unstable perch, — that 

 is their way. 



May 27, 1858. Ed. Emerson ^ shows me an e^^ of a 

 bittern (^Ardea minor^ from a nest in the midst of the 

 Great Meadows, which four boys found, scaring up the 

 bird, last Monday, the 24th. It was about a foot wide 

 on the top of a tussock, where the water around was 

 about one foot deep. I will measure the egg.^ They were 

 a little developed. Also an egg of a turtle dove, one of 

 two in a nest in a pitch pine, about six feet from the 

 ground, in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, by the side of a 

 frequented walk, on a fork on a nearly horizontal limb. 

 The egg is milk-white, elliptical, one and three six- 

 teenths inches long by seven eighths wide. 



^' [In the western part of Concord.] 



2 [Edward Waldo Emerson, son of Ralph Waldo Emerson, then a 

 boy of thirteen.] 



* It is clay-colored, one and seven eighths inches long by one and 

 nine sixteenths, about the same size at each end. 



