BIRDS OF INDIANA. 703 



building. They make a sound resembling the croaking of wood-frogs. 

 Their combined clamor can be heard four or five miles away when the 

 atmospheric conditions are favorable: Two eggs are usually laid, but 

 many nests contain only one. Both birds incubate, the females be- 

 tween 2 o'clock p. m. and 9 or 10 o'clock the next morning; the males 

 from 9 or 10 o'clock a. m. to 2 o'clock p. m. The males feed twice 

 each day, namely, from daylight to about 8 o'clock a. m., and again 

 late in the afternoon. The females feed only during the forenoon. 

 The change is made with great regularity as to time, all the males 

 being on the nest by 10 o'clock a. m. * * * 



Five weeks are consumed by a single nesting. Then the young are 

 forced out of the nest by the old birds. 



I can remember a number of interesting flights in my boyhood. 

 About 1873 they were very abundant for the last time near Brook- 

 ville. Prof. Evermann notes they were very abundant up to that 

 time in Carroll County; but the last were seen in the fall of 1877, 

 when a few hundred represented the countless numbers of half a cen- 

 tury or less ago. That autumn I was at Hanover and shot a number 

 from the extreme end of College Point. 



"The nesting area situated near Petoskey covered something like 

 100,000 arcres of land, and included not less than 150,000 acres within 

 its limits, being in length about forty miles by three to ten in width. 

 The number of dead birds sent by rail was estimated at 12,500 daily, 

 or 1,500,000 for the summer, besides 80,352 live birds; an equal num- 

 ber was sent by water. "We have, adding the thousands of dead and 

 wounded ones not secured, and the myriads of squabs left dead in the 

 nest, at the lowest possible estimate, a grand total of 1,000,000,000 

 Pigeons sacrificed to mammon during the nesting of 1878" (Prof. H. 

 B. Eoney, in Chicago Field, Vol. X, pp. 345-347). 



Mr. Parker says the last year they were at all abundant in Cook 

 County, 111., was in May and June, 1881. 



Mr. William Brewster visited the localities so well known as breed- 

 ing grounds for Pigeons throughout Michigan in the spring of 1888. 

 While the Pigeons had not made the flight they had in former years, 

 still he assures us the flight was a large one. They passed beyond the 

 lower peninsula and doubtless found a breeding ground remote from 

 persecution. Mr. Brewster was of the opinion that there were left 

 enough Pigeons to stock the West, provided they could be protected 

 by adequate laws. (The Auk, October, 1889, p. 285, et. seq.). 



They have not been protected, but steadily decreased in numbers 

 so that some years I have not heard of a single Pigeon. In 1892 Mr. 

 Pfrimmer shot two in Newton County. More were observed in 1894 



