Pigeons and Doves 



disc. Union for once has been fatal. Unlimited netting, even 

 during the entire nesting season, has resulted in sending over one 

 million pigeons to market from a single roost in one year, leaving 

 perhaps as many more wounded birds and starving, helpless, 

 naked squabs behind, until the poultry stalls became so glutted 

 with pigeons that the low price per barrel scarcely paid for their 

 transportation, and they were fed to the hogs. This abominable 

 practice of netting pigeons, discontinued only because there are 

 no flocks left to capture, drove the poor birds either to nest north 

 of the United States, or, when within its borders, to change their 

 habits and live in couples chiefly. Captain Bendire said in 1892: 

 "The extermination of the passenger pigeon has progressed so 

 rapidly during the past twenty years that it looks now as if their 

 (sic) total extermination might be accomplished within the present 

 century." This prophecy has been only too well fulfilled. But 

 their total disappearance is so recent that it is convenient though 

 strictly incorrect still to speak of them in the present tense. 



One, or at most two white eggs, laid on a rickety platform of 

 sticks in a tree, where they are visible from below, would scarcely 

 account for the myriads of pigeons once seen, were not frequent 

 nestings common throughout the summer; and it is said the birds 

 lay again on their return south. Both of the devoted mates take 

 regular turns at incubating, the female between two o'clock in 

 the afternoon and nine or ten the next morning, daily, leaving the 

 male only four or five hours sitting, according to Mr. William 

 Brewster. "The males feed twice each day, "he says, "namely, 

 from daylight to about eight A.M., and again late in the afternoon. 

 The females feed only in the forenoon. The change is made 

 with great regularity as to time, all the males being on the nest 

 by ten o'clock A.M. . . . The sitting bird does not leave the 

 nest until the bill of its incoming mate nearly touches its tail, the 

 former slipping off as the latter takes its place. . . . Five 

 weeks are consumed by a single nesting. . . . Usually the 

 male pushes the young off the nest by force. The latter struggles 

 and squeals precisely like a tame squab, but is finally crowded 

 out along the branch, and after further feeble resistance flutters 

 down to the ground. Three or four days elapse before it is able 

 to fly well. Upon leaving the nest it is often fatter and heavier 

 than the old birds; but it quickly becomes thinner and lighter, 

 despite 'the enormous quantity of food it consumes." Before it 



295 



