December 30, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



961 



so remaining being such that, excepting pos- 

 sibly the gray squirrel, they were the most 

 abundant small game of the woodlands during 

 the season from April to October. In nesting 

 there was no coUective habit among the birds; 

 each pair seemed entirely independent of 

 others, and the nests were irregularly dis- 

 tributed throughout the woodlands, no two 

 very close together nor much alike in posi- 

 tion. Perhaps the favorite sites were among 

 the thick and thorny branches of haw trees, 

 growing about the woodland margins and 

 within ravines too wet for ordinary forest 

 growth; sometimes they were within the for- 

 est at the base of one or two large branches 

 projecting from a tree-trunk; again they were 

 on broken stubs some yards high; sometimes 

 they were in crannies or even on the surface 

 of projecting rocks; and rarely they were on 

 the ground in hilly places of low shrubbery. 

 They were never noted more than fifteen or 

 twenty feet above the ground. Wherever lo- 

 cated, the nests were much alike, being rudely 

 built platforms of large twigs usually six or 

 eight inches long, so arranged as to form a 

 slight concavity within which two white eggs 

 (rarely one) were laid; the platform was eight 

 or ten inches across, and the tail of the sit- 

 ting bird projected beyond it on the better 

 protected side. In the course of the incuba- 

 tion stray feathers and excrement partly cov- 

 ered the twigs, so that by the time the young 

 were hatched the nest was moderately smooth 

 and symmetrical within, though always rudely 

 irregular and apparently on the verge of 

 wreckage without. At first clumsy and help- 

 less and nearly featherless, the young, fed by 

 both parents, grew rapidly and their crops 

 distended until about as large as the rest of 

 the nestlings; and they were able to fly per- 

 haps within three weeks after hatching, when 

 for a few days longer they remained inordi- 

 nately fat and awkward and were fed by the 

 old birds as they perched on branches; this 

 occurring about June, when the woods were 

 in their quietest and most umbrageous con- 

 dition. Thereafter for some two months the 

 old birds and the young formed a family 

 group, feeding and roosting near together, and 



seldom far apart, but not associating with 

 other families; and it was apparently these 

 groups or their survivors that winged their 

 way southward as families and never as flocks 

 with the approach of autumn. Between the 

 arrival in late March or April and the depart- 

 ure in early October, the pigeons were easy 

 quarry for small-game hunters and also for 

 birds and animals of prey, so that the family 

 groups flying southward averaged less than 

 three; and probably from this neighborhood 

 fewer pigeons flew southward in autumn than 

 remained from the spring migration. Earely 

 a group of five or even sis appeared, and there 

 were few solitary flights, so it seems probable 

 that depleted family groups sometimes imited. 



The food of the pigeons nesting in Iowa as 

 shown by the contents of their crops was 

 largely acorns and miscellaneous mast; and 

 when the vernal flights rested their food was 

 similar, except where they despoiled wheat 

 fields of the seed grain. The crops of the 

 birds shot in the early flights contained seeds 

 and buds popularly reputed to be from Louisi- 

 ana, but not systematically identified; though 

 generally the crops were nearly empty. My 

 first game was a pigeon, shot about 1862; 

 thereafter for a dozen years I shot, say, a 

 score annually, about equally divided between 

 spring migrants and local birds taken in late 

 summer and autumn. 



From the early sixties the pigeon migra- 

 tions declined. In the early seventies occa- 

 sional flocks of diminishing numbers con- 

 tinued to fly in spring, a considerable part of 

 them remaining to breed; then about 1876 

 these ceased, and the passenger pigeon became 

 extinct in eastern Iowa. 



n 



In 1894 and 1895 and again in 1900 I con- 

 ducted expeditions through southern Arizona 

 and western Sonora, and saw something of 

 what the camp men called " Sonora pigeons." 

 The birds were seen singly and by twos and 

 threes, either distant or in flight which was 

 noted as resembling that of the passenger 

 pigeon. In 1905 I spent some four months at 

 the desert water of Tinajas Altas in the flanks 



