26 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



time to hail newcomers with a call, peculiar to the occasion. 

 It was a long-drawn and moderately loud repetition of one note, 

 which sounded like *'treet," and this would cause the flying 

 birds to alight in nearby trees, giving in their turn a low call, 

 "tret, tret, tret." To me these seemed to be notes of greeting, 

 while other sounds were indicative of sex. For instance, the 

 female call-note is similar to the "treet" above, but the male 

 response is a low "oorn," which cannot be heard farther than 

 two or three hundred feet. My knowledge of these notes is due 

 to the fact that I learned to imitate them perfectly, in order to 

 caU the birds up within good shooting distance. Pigeon shoot- 

 ing was almost a daily occurrence, because these birds formed 

 the bulk of our meat supply. To secure enough for our table 

 my father seldom went farther than fifty feet from the house. 



The most interesting observation I have to make on the Wild 

 Pigeon is one fixed in my memory during a stroll along a beech 

 ridge back of our house. Being considered too small to carry a 

 gun, I armed myself with a number of light clubs, which I had 

 learned to throw with considerable force. Searching for Pigeons 

 through the woods, I soon heard them ahead of me in great 

 numbers, and working cautiously forwards I quickly caught 

 sight of them massed on the ground and feeding on beech-nuts. 

 They were moving directly toward me, so I concealed myself 

 and waited. Nearly an acre of ground was thickly covered with 

 the birds, all of them greedily busy in the search for food, turn- 

 ing over the leaves to expose the desired nuts. A portion of 

 the flock was constantly in the air, for as soon as one group of 

 birds found itself in the rear, it flew up and over the others, 

 thus securing the front position. Then the next lot of birds in 

 the rear would fly beyond these, and so on, so that the whole 

 flock seemed to be rolling towards me like an ocean wave. 

 Their progress in my direction was once interrupted by some 

 cause of alarm, I know not what, which startled the whole flock 

 into the air at the same instant. The noise of the frightened 

 wings was tremendous, and the disturbance created on the wood- 

 floor resembled the effects of a small hurricane. Leaves and 

 dead twigs were sucked into their wake and whirled haphazard 

 in all directions. The birds alighted on the trees directly above 



