BIRDS OF THE FARM AND THE FARM-YARD. 42 



o 



THE TURTLE-DOVE. 



The first wild bird I captured and tamed in my boy- 

 hood was taken from the nest of a Carolina Turtle- 

 Dove. The nest was placed upon the horizontal branches 

 of a small white pine about fifteen feet from the ground. 

 It was made of slender twigs put together as carelessly 

 as if they had fallen from some branches above, and were 

 levelled, but not hollowed, by the parent birds. The 

 nest contained a single white egg, more roundish in its 

 shape than that of the common tame Pigeon. I took the 

 young bird from the nest when it was nearly ready to 

 fly. I fed it exclusively upon farinaceous food, and was 

 successful in rearing it. It grew very tame, and behaved 

 like the young of a domesticated Dove. It often flew 

 away in quest of food and regularly returned, and was so 

 docile as to sit upon my hand. I exchanged the bird, to 

 gratify one of my schoolmates, for a volume of Peter 

 Pindar's works, which I read over and over again with 

 great delight, and a volume of President Monroe's Tour, 

 which I used for kindling-paper. 



After I had taken the bird from the nest I heard for 

 more than a week the almost uninterrupted cooing or 

 moaning of the parents, or one of them, upon an old 

 white oak that stood in a field near my boarding-house, 

 which was almost surrounded by woods. This oak was 

 about a quarter of a mile from the nest, and it seemed 

 as if the old birds had in some way or other a suspicion 

 of the fact that the young one had been removed in this 

 direction from the nest. To listen to the "mourning 

 Dove" was a romantic incident that gave me so much 

 satisfaction that it entirely absorbed all the sympathy I 

 was disposed to feel for the bereaved parents. The young 

 Dove was shot soon after I parted witli it by one of the 

 pioneers of Christian civilization, a Divinity Student. 



