PASSENGEK-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 great 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 



