88 Bird - Lore 



time, the ground is covered several inches deep with their dung; all the tender 

 grass and underwood are destroyed; the surface is covered with large limbs of 

 trees, broken down by the weight of the birds clustering one above another; 

 and the trees themselves, for thousands of acres, killed as completely as if 

 girdled with an axe. The marks of this desolation remain for many years 

 on the spot; and numerous places can be pointed out, where, for several years 

 afterwards, scarcely a single vegetable made its appearance" (Hinton). Of 

 the dung, another writes (1806) that, "Under each tree and sapling, lay an 

 astonishing quantity of dung, of which, from specimens we saw, there must 

 have been not only hundreds, but thousands, of waggonloads. Round each 

 resting place was a hillock raised a considerable height above the surface, 

 although the substance had been there eighteen months when we made our 

 observations on the place. At that time the heaps were, no doubt, greatly 

 sunk." Faux, in 1819, describes a Pigeon roost, which "is a singular sight in 

 the thinly settled states, particularly in Tennessee in the fall of the year, when 

 the roost extends over either a portion of woodland or barrens, from four to 

 six miles in circumference. The screaming noise they make, when thus roost- 

 ing, is heard at a distance of six miles; and, when the beechnuts are ripe, 

 they fly two hundred miles to dinner, in immense flocks, . . . They thus 

 travel four hundred miles daily." About the same time, the people along the 

 New England coast noticed that the Pigeons used to visit the marshes for 

 mud every morning, and then fly inland long distances. In this connection, 

 "Sketches and Eccentricities of Colonel David Crockett, 1835," has a per- 

 tinent note. "They frequently fly as much as eighty miles to feed, and return 

 to their roost the same evening. This was proved by shooting them at their 

 roost of a morning when their craws were empty, and then shooting them 

 again in the evening when they returned. Their craws were then filled with 

 rice, and it was computed that the nearest rice-field could not be within a 

 less distance than eighty miles. . . . near a roost, from an hour before 

 sunset until nine or ten o'clock at night, there is one continued roar, resem- 

 bling that of a distant waterfall. ... A pigeon roost in the west resembles 

 very much a section of country over which has passed a violent hurricane." 

 Breeding Places. — "The breeding places [were] of greater extent than 

 the roosts. In the western countries they [were] generally in beech-woods, 

 and often [extended] nearly in a straight line across the country, a great 

 way. ... A few years ago, there was one of these breeding-places [Ky.], 

 which was several miles in breadth, and upwards of forty miles in length. 

 In this tract, almost every tree was furnished with nests, wherever the branches 

 could accommodate them. The pigeons made their first appearance there 

 about the 10th of April, and left it altogether, with their young, before the 

 25th of May" (Hinton). Of their former numbers in New England, in 1741, 

 Richard Hazen made this record: "For three miles together, the pigeons' 

 nests were so thick that five hundred might have been told on the beech trees 



