MOURNING-DOVESr 375 



met with singly or in small parties in the woods. Such stragglers attract little 

 attention, and no one attempts to net them, although many are shot. The largest 

 nesting he ever visited was in 1876 or 1877. It began near Petosky, and extended 

 north-east past Crooked Lake for twenty-eight miles, averaging three or four miles 

 wide. The birds arrived in two separate bodies, one directly from the south by 

 land, the other following the east coast of Wisconsin, and crossing at Maniton 

 Island. He saw the latter body come in from the lake at about three o'clock in the 

 afternoon. It was a compact mass of pigeons, at least five miles long by one mile 

 wide. The birds began building when the snow was twelve inches deep in the 

 woods, although the fields were bare at the time. So rapidly did the colony 

 extend its boundaries, that it soon passed literally over and around the place where 

 he was netting, although, when he began, this point was several miles from 

 the nearest nest. Nestings usually start in deciduous woods, but during their 

 progress the pigeons do not skip any kind of trees they encounter. The Petosky 

 nesting extended eight miles through hardwood timber, then crossed a river bottom 

 wooded with arborvitse, and thence stretched through white pine woods about 

 twenty miles. For the entire distance of twenty-eight miles every tree of any 

 size had more or less nests, and many trees were filled with them. None were 

 lower than about fifteen feet above the ground. Pigeons are very noisy when 

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

 combined clamour can be heard four or five miles away when the atmospheric 

 conditions are favourable. Two eggs are usually laid, but many nests contain 

 only one. Both birds incubate, the female between 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 Ground-Pigeons. 



Family PeristeRID^. 



In contradistinction to the preceding groups, which may be collectively 



spoken of as tree-pigeons, we now come to a family whose members live much on 



the ground. This family of ground-pigeons, which includes almost all the remaining 



species, is distinguished from the tree-pigeons by having the legs equal to or longer 



than the middle toe. Seven subfamilies are recognised, in the first six of which 



the feathers of the neck are never hackled. 



The 2i;roup of mourning -doves (ZenaidincB), distinguished by 

 Mourning-Doves. 7i i 1 



having a blackish, more or less metallic, spot below the ear-coverts, 



includes thirteen rather small American species, placed in four genera ; the first 

 (Zenaidura) resembling the two following ones in having the scapulars and upper 

 wing-coverts spotted with black. It further agrees with the next genus (Zenaida) 

 in the tail being composed of fourteen feathers, and the bill nearly straight, but 

 difiers in having the tail longer and generally wedge-shaped. All the three 

 species are North and Central American, the best known being the mourning- 

 dove {Z. carolinensis) of the United States, Central America, and the West 



