60 BEHAVIOR OF PIGEONS. 



activity occurs very persistently throughout the day, but it soon becomes mainly 

 confined to the early-morning period between 8 and 10 o'clock. This activity 

 persisted for 8 days in the bronze-wing and then stopped. Both birds participated 

 for the first 5 days, but the male alone was active thereafter. 



NEATNESS IN NEST. 



When the young hatch, the old ones I saw the male do this once take the shells 

 in their beaks and carry them off to the farther corner of the yard and drop them. This is 

 done to save the young from being cut or incommoded. 



When roosting, doves defecate quite frequently, but when incubating the female 

 allows nothing to pass the cloaca during the night, waiting until the male comes to take 

 his turn in the morning; then flying to a remote part of the yard, she relieves herself of 

 a monstrous load often enough to fill a good sized spoon. The weight in one case taken 

 at random was 11.75 g. A ring-dove laid her first egg at the usual time and came off the 

 nest at 10 o'clock hi the evening to defecate and then returned. In the morning, before 

 it was fairly light, she came off again to relieve herself; it was evident that she felt the 

 strain. She soon returned to the nest. 



I have noticed that the male is also equally careful to attend to this matter only after 

 leaving the nest. He does not, however, have to carry so large a mass, as he is not so 

 long on the nest at one time. 



The young, when defecating, reach back just as far towards the edge of the nest as 

 they possibly can, thus keeping the center of the nest perfectly clean. The young, after 

 they get to be a week or more old, push back as far out of the nest as possible. Before 

 this age, the young reach back less, but the anus is protruded like a tube and thrust down 

 into the bed of the nest so far that none is seen on the surface. I have often wondered how 

 the nest was kept so clean during the first week until I noticed this habit. This habit is 

 perhaps correlated with the habit, in the old birds, of adding new straw to their nest 

 after the young are a few days old. 



I learned that the female of a pair of archangels, unlike any other dove I have had, 

 piles up her dung around the nest. As it is now cold weather, this does not matter so much, 

 but I presume she would do the same in warm weather, when it might make a most filthy 

 place of the nest. This seems to be a case where an instinct of a very fixed character has 

 weakened and become obsolete. 



One day, at 7 h 45 m a. m., I saw the male bronze-wing take the emptied shell of the 

 just-hatched egg to the floor. On the next day it was noted that one of the young was 

 dead and that the female had just taken it out of the nest and dropped it on the floor, 

 where she had deposited the second egg shell. The young of a pair of mourning-doves was 

 dragged out of the nest with the egg-shell and got cold before being discovered; the bird 

 revived, but died on the same day. (R33, Em 7.) 



The following similar incidents are reported by Dr. Riddle: 



"Two alba-orientalis hybrids had been given eggs to hatch. In hatching, a small piece 

 of the shell became attached to an umbilicus. Two hours later both bird and attached 

 shell were found on the floor of the cage. While the act was not observed, there is reason 

 to believe that the old birds, in attempting to remove the shell from the nest, had carried 

 away the young as well. In another case, when one young had been hatched, the other 

 egg was just nicely 'pipped.' In removing the shells of the first egg, the parents also 

 removed, and deposited on the floor, the egg which was partly hatched. This egg was 

 discovered shortly afterwards and the young was saved." 



