PASSENGER-PIGEONS. 201 



less attractive plumage. The head, part of the neck, and 

 chin of the male bird, are of a slaty-blue colour ; the lower 

 portions being also of a slate colour, banded with gold, green, 

 and purplish-crimson, changing as the bird moves here and 

 there. Reddish-hazel feathers cover the throat and breast, 

 while the upper tail-coverts and back are of a dark slaty-blue. 

 Their other feathers are black, edged with white ; and the 

 lower part of the breast and abdomen are purplish-red and 

 white. The beak is black, and the eyes of a fiery orange 

 hue, with a naked space round them of purplish-red. 



Its chief food is the beech-mast ; but it also lives on acorns, 

 and grain of all sorts — especially rice. It is calculated that 

 each bird eats half a pint of food in the day ; and when we 

 recollect their numbers, we may conceive what an immense 

 amount must be consumed. 



The female hatches only one bird at a time, in a nest 

 slightly made of a few twigs, loosely woven into a sort of 

 platform. Upwards of one hundred nests have been found in 

 one tree, with a single egg in each of them ; but there are 

 probably two or three broods in the season. In a short time 

 the young become very plump, and so fat, that they are 

 occasionally melted down for the sake of their fat alone. 

 They choose particular places for roosting — generally amid a 

 grove of the oldest and largest trees in the neighbourhood. 



Wilson, Audubon, and other naturalists, give us vivid de- 

 scriptions of the enormous flights of these birds. Let us watch 

 with Audubon in the neighbourhood of one of their curious 

 roosting-places. We now catch sight of a flight of the birds 

 moving with gi-eat steadiness and rapidity, at a height out 

 of gunshot, in several strata deep, and close together. From 

 right to left, far as the eye can reach, the breadth of this vast 



