DESCRIPTIVE LIST 157 



The passenger pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius (Linn.}, is doubtless now extinct. 

 A reward of $1,500 was recently offered by some American ornithologists for the 

 discovery of a nest. This was advertised by the Audubon societies in all parts of 

 North America; but when the offer closed on December 1, 1911, after having stood 

 for two years, there had been found no one to claim the reward. Formerly these 

 birds occurred in uncountable millions, their flights darkening the sky and their 

 roosting and nesting places being strewn with broken branches torn from the trees 

 by the sheer weight of the tons of bird-life piled upon them. A nesting colony 

 in Michigan in 1876 or 1877 occupied the forest over a territory twenty-eight miles 

 long by three or four miles wide. The last known nesting site in Michigan occurred 

 in 1881, and was "only of moderate size perhaps eight miles long." BREWSTER. 



Actual records of their occurrence in North Carolina are not plentiful, although 

 one may often hear old residents speak of their appearance in great flocks many 

 years ago. H. H. Brimley spent the whole morning following a single specimen 

 in some pine woods near Raleigh in the spring of 1891. This was the last of the 

 three specimens he has ever seen alive. Cairns reported it as very rare in Bun- 

 combe County in the early nineties, and collected a female in 1894. Dr. K. P. 

 Battle, of Raleigh, a careful observer of birds, states that when at Bingham School 

 between 1871 and 1872 he saw a flock about a mile in width. When at the State 

 University at Chapel Hill, in 1878, he killed one out of a bunch of three. 



There is no definite, incontrovertible explanation of the cause of the total extinc- 

 tion of this bird, which in teeming millions swept over the country only a few 

 years ago. We only know that the vast nesting sites, which thirty years ago 

 showed a riot of bird life so crowded and so extensive as to be far beyond the 

 power of human mind to grasp in terms of numbers of individuals, are now silent 

 and deserted. Of the myriads that once obscured the rays of the sun, only a soli- 

 tary individual remained in existence when these lines were written, a female 

 eighteen years of age confined in a cage in the Zoological Gardens at Cincinnati, 

 Ohio. This specimen, apparently the last of the race, died on September 1, 1914. 

 Their extinction was doubtless hastened by the great slaughter to which they 

 were subjected by the hands of man. 



Should one of these birds by any chance fall into the hands of any of our readers, 

 it may be known by its general resemblance to the Mourning Dove, coupled with 

 much larger size. 



Genus Zenaidura (Bonap.) 



140. Zenaidura macroura carolinensis (Linn.}. MOURNING DOVE. 



Description. Brownish olive, glossed with blue and vinaceous; a dark ear-spot in male; belly 

 cream-buff; plumage with metaUic luster. Female duller. L., 11.00-13.00; W., 5.75-6.00; T", 

 5.75-6.50. 



Range. Eastern North America, universally distributed. 



Range in North Carolina. Whole State at all seasons; common. 



Mourning Doves are common residents throughout the State. In the fall and 

 winter they gather in flocks and many frequent the grain and peanut fields. They 

 are birds of strong appetites. One killed by a United States Government collector 



