Order COLU MBE. 
Family COLUMBID_. 
ECTOPISTES MIGRATORIUS (L.). (315.). 
PASSENGER PIGEON. 
Wild pigeons have been seen in the vicinity of Lanesboro, 
Fillmore county, and Spirit lake, Jackson county, the southern 
line of the State, as early as the 27th of March, but this is 
earlier than the average arrival in even those lower counties. 
A review of 20 years gives about the 5th of April, as nearer 
that time. And their first appearance has never been in such 
vast flocks as have characterized their spring migrations in 
Illinois and Indiana in the first years of their settlement by 
the whites. Still there have been occasional years when con- 
siderable flocks have located and nested in somewhat restricted 
localities throughout the state. I well remember one when a 
large flock roosted for some time in an extensive popular grove 
but a few miles out of the city of St. Paul. It subsequently 
became distributed over a very wide extent of eastern Minne- 
sota, and the western part of Wisconsin adjacent. The country 
generally throughout this district is toa great extent charac- 
terized by such groves of poplar, red and black oak brush- 
lands. In these, on limbs generally not more than seven feet 
from the ground, they constructed their nests about the first 
of May. 
These were very frail structures and placed on a limb where 
there was a horizontal branch. They consisted of a few long 
sticks scarcely as large as a clay-pipe stem, on which were 
distributed a scanty supply of twigs, or still smaller sticks, 
with a few leaves overlaying the whole. Some nests had no 
leaves at all, when the egg could be easily seen from underneath 
it. In allof my examinations of them I seldom found more 
than one egg inanest. It was pure white, nearly oval. 
Their food consisted essentially of acorns in the spring, 
but a heavy tax was levied on the wheat and oats in late sum- 
mer and fall. Of late years but few are seen in any of the dis- 
