93 



PASSENGER PIGEONS. 



Just before dawn one morning during the autumn 

 of 1847, I was on the heights over the town of 

 Hartford, Kentuck}^, looking for rice birds and 

 other such " small deer," when suddenly the sky- 

 seemed darkened as I quitted a wood, and on look- 

 ing up I saw immense flocks of pigeons.* These 



* The passenger pigeon of North America {Ectopistes migratorius) 

 belongs to a peculiar species, which is to be met with in all the Northern 

 States and in Canada. A large number of these birds pass the winter 

 up to the sixtieth degree of latitude, and live among the thickets of 

 juniper. The beauty of their plumage is remarkable, for it is shot with 

 azure, gold, purple, and green. The head of the male is of a dusky- 

 blue, and the breast of a hazel, shaded with red ; the neck streaked with 

 green, gold, and scarlet ; the wings blue, spotted with black and brown 

 spots, and the belly as white as snow. Across the tail, which is very 

 long and wedge-shaped, is a stripe of bright black, and the feet are as 

 red as those of the Fi-ench partridge. The female has not got such 

 brilliant colours. Her plumage is dusky grey, mised with black and 

 dark chestnut. The only beauties which Nature has bestowed upon 

 her are those of her form, which is graceful and slim, and the limpidity 

 and brightness of her eye. The migration of these passenger pigeons 

 has been attributed by different naturalists to the imperious necessity 

 of flying from the rigours of the cold, and from the foggy climate of 

 the North, to seek a milder temperature. This is not, however, the 

 whole cause, in my opinion. They are attracted and repelled by the 

 abundance or scarcity of the fruits on which they feed, and it is only 

 when they have exhausted all the resources of the neighbourhood in 

 which they settle that these pigeons resume their flight and change 

 their location. Several inhabitants of Kentucky and Illinois have 

 assured me that, after remaining for two or three years in the woods 

 of these States, the passenger pigeons flew off one morning, when 

 there was not a single acorn left for them to feed upon. In 1845, 



